The uninhibited and fiery performance of Emma Stone in Poor Creatures marked yesterday the third day of the Venice Film Festival, practically shocking the journalists who attended the morning screening of this gothic fable about women's liberation, which is already emerging as one of the favorites to the Golden Lion. The American actress did not attend the contest due to the actors' strike, so the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos had to answer questions from the press 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 Alasdair 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 good looks 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 sexual appetite.
Lanthimos read the novel in 2011 and has since wanted to adapt it for the big screen. 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. 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 her most complex and dedicated role to date, displaying herself completely nude and starring in various sex scenes. “All of that was in the novel. I didn't want to make a prudish movie that betrayed the character and Emma was totally committed,” said Lanthimos, adding that they had an intimacy coordinator to prepare these scenes.
Another actor always devoted to the role is the Danish Mads Mikkelsen, star of The promised land, a period film directed by Nikolaj Arcel that touches on themes such as ambition, power, cruelty and love. The interpreter referred to his character as "a lonely guy who lives obsessed with a single goal and with belonging to a world that, deep down, he hates." Friday's day was completed with a tribute to Wes Anderson, who presented out of competition the adaptation of the story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, by his admired Roald Dahl. The Texan director regretted the revision in the work of the creator of Willy Wonka: “What's done is done. The only one who can modify a work at most is its own author and, in this case, Roald Dahl is dead, ”he settled.
