After committing suicide, a young woman named Bella (Emma Stone) is brought back to life by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Her brain replaced by that of an unborn child, she becomes entrenched in the life of a shrewd but debauched lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) and, by advocating her freedom, rediscovers the world. A strange, motley, surreal world.
Prosthetics, flamboyant baroque costumes straight out of a Victorian uchrony, a sinister fairy-tale setting, a retro-futuristic world, drooling make-up and strangely coloured skies… There’s no doubt about it, the visual universe of “Poor Creatures”, the new film by Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, La Favorite), is rich and eclectic. It owes much to the unbridled creativity of the Greek filmmaker who, since 2009’s Canines, has accustomed us to deform and disturbing realities. But in terms of aesthetics, the director has never gone as far as in “Poor Creatures”. Lanthimos’s adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s book of the same name, a kind of gothic novel pastiche and feminist Frankenstein, is a further example of his audacity.
But this proposal would not be so successful without the work of the numerous technical teams. Notable among them is set decorator Zsuzsa Mihalek, a Hungarian veteran of both Hollywood productions and cinéma d’auteur. We owe her the fantastic East Berlin of “Atomic Blonde” in 2017, as well as the poetic Hungary of Bela Tarr’s Harmonies Werkmeister in 2000. Like these two films, the setting of “Pauvres Créatures” not only serves the story but, by creating this strange universe that fills us with wonder, is the driving force behind the story.
The same is true of the costumes. They are the work of Holly Waddington, this is her most ambitious project to date as costume designer (she previously worked on William Oldroyd’s “The Young Lady”, with Florence Pugh). In “Poor Creatures”, Bella’s character evolves with her costumes. She begins by wearing puffy dresses, symbols of her still childlike character, before adopting more feminine but also more corseted clothes. At the same time, her wardrobe begins with clothes typical of the story’s era (Victorian England), before becoming crazier and more colourful, reflecting her own transformation. Lanthimos and Waddington even go so far as to use totally anachronistic materials for Bella’s costumes, such as plastic and latex, very much of the 1970s. But “Poor Creatures” doesn’t take place in Victorian England. It takes place in the minds of its creators, its characters, and now in ours too.
“Poor Creatures” by Yorgos Lanthimos, in cinemas from January 17