Emma Stone has a new movie out, and it’s her most daring yet. It’s called Poor Things, and in it she plays a young woman who’s brought back to life, Frankenstein-style. Unlike the titular character in Bride of Frankenstein, she doesn’t immediately freak out, leading to disaster. Instead she winds up roaming the planet, getting into all kinds of erotic roundelays.
So is this movie R-rated? You betcha. But why exactly? Per the film’s IMDb page, it features lots of nudity, mastubration, sex with multiple partners, and more things that wouldn’t pass muster were it even a PG-13.
Stone has earned some of the best reviews of her career for Poor Things, with critics praising how far is pushes the boundaries of good taste — especially in an age when most mainstream movies are powerfully sexless. The film’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos — who previously directed Stone in The Favourite — spoke about that very issue at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year.
“It’s weird, isn’t it? Why is there no sex in movies?” Lanthimos asked. He said Stone had “no shame about her body, nudity, engaging in those scenes. And she understood that right away. The great thing about myself and Emma is that now we’ve completed four films together, so there’s a shorthand. We can communicate without having to explain everything or talk too much about things.”
Poor Things is currently in select theaters. It expands nationwide on December 25, and will no doubt make for some awkward Christmas Day family moviegoing adventures. You’ll have to wait a good long while for it to be streaming.
