Povere creatures! (in competition a Venice 80 and in cinemas from January 25) begins as Anna of miraclesbecomes Frankenstein and continues as a story of female fulfillment (also the untranslatable “empowerment”). As for the minutes of applause that accompany the chronicles of each preview with the public, for Emma Stone there is already talk of an Oscar nomination. Too? No. Because the construction of Beautiful Baxter, character taken from novel by Alasdair Gray and translated for the cinema by the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimosis – using a worn-out expression – a tour de force of pleasant irreverence.
A young woman brought back to life by a scientist who in turn was stitched updoctor Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who from zero degree of naivety discovers and attacks bourgeois conventions. From the more universal ones (or at least it tries) to those of good manners, of the answer given, of the child who screams and what’s wrong if you want to beat him (and why not, he was already doing it in 1981 Athena Cenci in West of Donald).
Emma Stone in Venice 80 with Poor creatures!: never so naked, never so freak
With her hair down in a Victorian era that looks like a perverted futurist pastry shopEmma Stone walks with difficulty, has a bizarre syntax, spits food and moans in lace dresses and ruffles with unheard-of bulges, discovers the alternative use of a cucumber and accepts every imposition of its creator Godwin (God willing; for example the marriage to one of his students). But dream, peek through the curtains and see the city from the roof.
For a long time it is not clear where Lanthimos is going with this, if that is Poor creatures! is only a virtuosic style essay on a misfit placed in a display case. Then, with the arrival of Mark Ruffalo (Duncan Wedderburn)a lawyer who decides to free Bella into the world (“I will marry you”, she says to her boyfriend, “but first I go to Lisbon, I feel warm for Duncan”), everything becomes clear: it is basically a coming of age where you laugh a lot.
Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in “Poor creatures!”. (Searchlight Pictures).
Where at each stage of the temporary couple’s journey, the poor creature acquires information about culture and customs. On the ugliness of life, from the poor to brothels where women sell themselves but lead socialist struggles. And the more he learns, the more Duncan goes crazy and cries, he who thought he had an innocent doll in his hands he finds himself snatching the books by Ralph Waldo Emerson from her hands. Books Martha hands her – a revived Hanna Schygulla. These are irresistible moments of the short circuit between the rough and narrow-minded travel companion, and she who reasons on the concept of cynicism.
“Poor creatures!”, the English poster. (Searchlight Pictures).
The role of the alien, the strange, the freak, seems a natural fact for Emma. One of the reasons lies in the long gestation of the project Poor Creatures!, started with Yorgos in 2017 (this is their third project). Another concerns the not indifferent characteristic of having the right physicality, the right wide eyes (reason for a joke in a Golden Globe edition).
Although in comparison with the – equally freak – performance of Caleb Landry Jones in DogMan by Luc Besson (passed yesterday at the Mostra), Stone pays the price of the fairy tale against the most pleasant world of drag queens, as well as a certain elementary nature of emancipationhis Bella is a living character of which he knows how to convey more than one dimension. Role model for candor and humanity, freak but anti-freak because misaligned with the normality that rules. Creature imprisoned, then released, then imprisoned but according to its rules.
And his revenge is no less satisfying of the Douglas/Caleb sawed-off shotgun. Whether it will be enough for her to win a Volpi Cup on the third day of the Show is a bit early to say (the actress did not come to the Lido due to the SAG-Aftra strike). Just as soon for an Oscar, but you know, the nomination campaign never stops now. Indeed, it begins with the Venice Film Festival.
The cast of Poor creatures! consists of: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbot, Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Margaret Qualley and Hanna Schygulla.
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