Poor Creatures”: The Extraordinary Gothic Tale Yorgos Lanthimos Dreamed Up for Emma Stone, Before “The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos wanted to do “something I hadn’t seen before.” Of course, his inspiration would come from several fronts that would end up composing his own hybrid beast of cinema: “Poor Creatures” (or “Poor Things”, in its original title), a film that respects both the classic format of the tales of oral tradition taken by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault and even Lewis Carroll with his “Alice in Wonderland”; but that plays with techniques and a narrative and visual power that turns the experience of watching his film as strident and original, which even enjoys making more than one uncomfortable. The result of his experimentation was a gothic, dreamlike, erotic satire, which even follows the infallible narrative formula of the hero’s path, to compose a feminist epic in the skin of the fantastic Emma Stone, in her second leading role with the director, after “La Favorita” (2018). However, the idea of making this film is even earlier than the one nominated for an Oscar in 2019. “We’ve known each other for about eight years and we started talking about this movie around 2017, around the time we were shooting ‘The Favourite,'” the Academy Award winner for “La La Land” said in an interview with Vogue. Between the two films, at the beginning of 2020, Emma and Yorgos shot a short film in Greece (the country where the filmmaker is from): “Bleat”. And with two projects in their filmography, they decided to unarchive the dream of “Poor Creatures”, which they began to define in the pandemic, with castins and distributors. The actress also took over as a producer, so she was also present on the creative side. Yorhos Lanthimos and Emma Stone behind the scenes of “Poor Creatures”””Poor Creatures” is based on the 1992 novel of the same name written by Scottish author Alistair Gray, whom Lanthimos got to know and even praised in one of his films. I read the book many years ago and met the author, Alistair Gray, in Scotland to convince him to give me the rights. And so it was. He was a lovely man. Unfortunately, he died a couple of years before we made the film (in 2019), but he was very special, very vitalistic. When we met he was in his eighties, and as soon as I arrived, he told me that he had seen ‘Canino’: ‘I’ve asked a friend to play me the DVD, because I don’t know how these things work. And I think you’re very talented, young man.” I was young then. He took me for a walk around Glasgow, showing me various places he had put in the novel, and the university where he taught, and it took me a while to follow his conversation, because he seemed plethoric,” the director recalled in the same interview. Yorhos Lanthimos and Emma Stone behind the scenes of “Poor Creatures”It took a few years to achieve this Golden Lion-winning adaptation at the 80th edition of the 2023 Venice Film Festival, premiered at the 38th Mar del Plata Film Festival and multi-nominated for the 2024 Oscars (to be held on March 10). In 2015, with “The Lobster”, he acquired the confidence and security of being able to make his first film in English, which would open the doors to a more mainstream cinema that would receive him as one of the most interesting and risky directors of the last decades. Thus, and after the success of “La Favorita”, “I had more room to do what I wanted”, he acknowledges. The Beast Was BeautifulWith “Poor Creatures”, the minds of the actress and the director were unleashed to create the classic anti-tale, nourished by its best virtues (classic characters, costumes of kings and queens, a structure of beginning-conflict-end, and perhaps even with a triumphant moral), and they started from one of the best of its time: Frankenstein (1818), by Mary Shelley. In the film, the eccentric surgeon Godwin Baxter (played by Willem Dafoe) introduces his student Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef) to Bella Baxter (Stone), whom he brought to life and whom, like Rapunzel (creepy version) in her castle, he keeps away from the dangers of the world. Willem Dafoe with Emma Stone | “Poor creatures.” The name of the protagonist is also a play on references that allows us to acquire the ingenuity of the classic Beauty and the Beast, even -and perhaps those close to my generation will feel identified- with the fourth superpowered girl, which was an experiment that contrasted with her little sisters. When Bella discovers one afternoon that beyond her palace there are physical pleasures that she doesn’t know about, the arrival of a strange lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (played by Mark Ruffalo), turns into a The perfect excuse to set out to find out the mysteries of sex, to go on a journey of self-discovery. As she admits to Max: she distrusts the stranger, and knows that a man like him “suits her”, but she will prioritize acquiring as much experience as possible, knowing and living each of the human pleasures, and once so, returning. Emma Stone with Mark Ruffalo in “Poor Creatures”As a metaphor, Bella’s reality takes on colors. The black and white shots (and even fisheye interventions) are interrupted to leave a stridency of palettes that will play a predominant role in the visual proposal. Then, the young woman discovers both sex, the fear of being a woman without mandates or limitations in a corseted society, the fascinating side of living, and the miseries of a system profoundly unequal in wealth, ethnicity, and gender. Emma Stone Plays Bella Baxter, One of the Biggest Challenges of Her Acting Journey | “Poor creatures.” At the same time, the world was talking about progress and one of the greatest moments of technological development, which also generated social and philosophical debates (such as those taken by Shilley to Frankenstein) and poverty. Emma Stone stars in “Poor Creatures.” Lanthimos imagined Bella’s world as a combination of the Victorian era with a futuristic and surreal aesthetic, allowing the story to contain the spirit of a classic: that is, to span across generations. Bella’s long hair defies the tradition of the time that styled updos and rigid norms. Emma Stone Plays Bella Baxter, One of the Biggest Challenges of Her Acting Journey | “Poor creatures.” Even his wardrobe evolves. By designer Holly Waddington (“The Great,” “Lady Macbeth”) and hair, makeup and prosthetics designer Nadia Stacey (with whom she worked again after “The Favourite” and “Cruella”), the apparel accompanies Bella’s growth as a narrative arc of the character, and as a woman. You may also be interested in: “Cruella”, delirium and style: Emma Stone in the skin of the villain who sought to be authenticWaddington used everything from Victorian-looking blouses and incomplete outfits referencing Bella’s childhood, short and simple wardrobes that accompany the naturalness she experiences in Lisbon, to formal suits during her time as an upper-class woman. The only time Bella wears a corset in the film is when she goes back to Alfie Blessington and puts on a dress from her previous life as Victoria Blessington.Emma Stone Plays Bella Baxter, One of the Biggest Challenges of Her Acting Journey | “Poor creatures.” The protagonist’s journey (between Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris) in turn refers to the English campaigns of expansion and domination of territories (mainly in Africa and India), with one big difference: “Poor Creatures” does not manage to make Belle in the image and likeness of Shilley, a singular woman in Victorian London (even though she is her own creature, like the most bestial side explored by “Wild Tales”), which expands our imagination so that what we conquer are our desires.

Original source in Spanish