The uninhibited and fiery performance of Emma Stone in Poor Creatures has been the highlight of this third day of the Venice Film Festival, practically shocking the journalists who this morning attended the screening of this gothic science fiction fable about women's liberation , which already breaks in as one of the favorites for the Golden Lion.
The American actress has not attended the contest due to the actors' strike, so the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has answered the press's questions alone after being received with loud applause.
The film, with a script by Tony McNamara, draws on the novel of the same name by Scottish writer Alisdair Gray, and takes us to 19th century London in which an unorthodox and scarred-faced scientist (Willem Dafoe) revives a young man trying to commit suicide Bella is given a baby brain and she reacts like a child unable to speak coherently. Her gestures are rough and her attitude capricious. She is a kind of Frankenstein with no visible scars and long black hair who little by little will rebel against his confinement in the surgeon's house, inhabited by other hybrid creatures, eager for new experiences and with a great appetite. sexual.
Lanthimos read the novel in 2011 and has wanted to adapt it ever since. Stone, with whom she has already worked on La favourite, the short Bleat and soon they will repeat in AND, got involved immediately, also acting as co-producer. Unlike the novel, the story focuses solely on the point of view of Bella Baxter, "a mind that can start from scratch, completely free, without shame or prejudice," said the director.
The protagonist receives the attention of a student who notes her progress, but her desire for adventure leads her to run away with a lawyer played by a funny Mark Ruffalo with whom she will travel through Lisbon, Alexandria or Paris. Winner of an Oscar for La La Land, Stone embroiders the most complex and dedicated role of hers to date, exhibiting herself totally nude and starring in several sex scenes, some quite unpleasant. "All of that was in the novel. I didn't want to make a sanctimonious movie that betrayed the character and Emma was totally committed," Lanthimos said, adding that they had an intimacy coordinator to prepare those scenes.
On a visual level, the film is overwhelming, just like the story it explains, loaded with both perverse and comic elements as well as second chances and revenge, always taken to the extreme. Canino's director's camera goes from vibrant color to black and white and from normal lenses to wide angle to draw a proposal that will not leave anyone indifferent. "I'm interested in developing a style and taking it further in each film. Here it was about doing something different, a world that was right for Bella, that couldn't be the world as we know it."
If yesterday everyone highlighted the interpretation of Penélope Cruz for her Laura Ferrari in the Michael Mann film, the Spanish woman has emerged as a serious competitor in the face of the fight for the Volpi Cup for best actress. Too bad neither of them is at the Lido these days.
