Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 film adapts Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel. Bella Baxter returns from death with an infant mind that the hundred and forty one minutes push to adulthood. Nothing was shot on a real street. The work was done on sets at Origo and Korda Studios in Budapest, with Lisbon and Paris on backlots. Robbie Ryan shot the opening in black and white on Double-X; the picture turns to colour when Bella reaches Lisbon, those stretches on Ektachrome reversal stock. The widest lens is a 4mm fisheye made for 16mm, which Ryan says gives a porthole effect, sharp centre, edges dropping away. Framing is 1.66:1. At the 2024 ceremony it took eleven nominations and won four: Emma Stone for Actress in a Leading Role, Holly Waddington for Costume Design, Nadia Stacey with Mark Coulier and Josh Weston for Makeup and Hairstyling, James Price with Shona Heath for Production Design. It lost Directing, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, Supporting Actor and Best Picture, where Stone was also named a producer. It won Venice’s Golden Lion. A good fit if you accept Bella learning the world mainly through sex, shown in long explicit scenes. Not for you if you want a sense of place from the cities she reaches; Lisbon and Paris are deliberately fake, built on a backlot.