If you haven't seen the new Yórgos Lánthimos (Canine, The Lobster, Killing the sacred deer...Run away! This review will contain several spoilers, and although the film looks less for its screenplay twists than for its unique atmosphere, the sideration felt in the face ofPoor creatureswill only be greater in the mind of a spectator blank of all information... And for others, good reading!
Doctor Maboul
A famous (and unorthodox) doctor, Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a pregnant young woman (Emma Stone) just after his suicide. If he succeeds in bringing her back to life, he will not forbid some anatomical faceties: he will remove the brain from the newborn to put him in his mother's skull box. Trouble operation on a woman/width forgetting everything about her past, now stuck in a body unsuitable for her mental age. Renowned Bella, she is becoming more and more impatient about discovering the outside world and leaving the home of her "creator"...
Poor creatures. In the plural... Because if one could have believed at first glance that the title referred only to Bella (the character incarnated by Emma Stone which is literally of all the planes), the feature film orchestrates the closing of coffins of a whole world and of all the pathetic puppets that inhabit it. In this beer closed sometimes buried a gallery of tricky characters: an apprentice-surgeon cuckold (Ramy Youssef), a conquered lover who gets caught up in his own game (Mark Ruffalo), a second Frankenstein just as attractive but much more limited, a gallery of Parisian prostitutes and an entire bestiary of chimeral beasts as funny as it is worrying.
The only one that seems to escape – and again – is Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), well nicknamed God. The creator (he creates so much of his « Human », its animals « Half-mi » or his students) watch his poor things vegetate – and slowly die – before him. A recurring character at LánthimosColin FarrellinKilling the sacred deer, parents inCanine, the couple at the head of the hotelThe Lobster, the "gourou" ofAlps...), superior, twisted and dispossessed at the same time, which could ultimately embody the Greek director himself. A new Mary Shelley who sews her cruel stories and observes, behind the eye of the camera, how they unfold. Some plans – the recurring fisheye effect or the plan reduced to a blurred round that we would see through the Judas d'une porte – even recall its own intermediate status: the image that simmers on the screen wakes up to its image condition, the spectator gets a brief moment dispossessed of his film and we are reminded of the presence of an interlayered passer...
Black Optimism
And this smuggler delivers us here one of his most optimistic films, despite all the dark macules that glaze his story. We're a long way from the cold surgicalCanineor cruel ineluctability ofKilling the sacred deer, Poor creaturesis a story of emancipation providing hope... Finally, at least in the carcan of the cinema of Lánthimos because the film is still well imbued. A female emancipation, a Frankenstein literally assimilated to her offspring, locked up, raped, who would find escape thanks to a trinity that has nothing hieratic: reading, science and sex. Especially sex elsewhere (but we will come back)... But what strikes the most is the taste for the comedy that goes throughPoor creatures. A frank laughter, brought by an irresistible repetition comic and a constant shift taste, as well as a yellow laughter in the face of the escalation of embarrassing scenes of which only Lánthimos has the secret.
The filmmaker who had offered us the Haneke in the text on several occasions diversifies his influences, leaves his panoptic to get closer to his characters, without yet totally dispelling himself from his cynicism and from a good part of very crumbling nihilism.
Gender(s)
InPoor creaturesThe stupre is everywhere. First the twisted, viciated, possessive sex, exercised on this strange cherub Frankenstein so quick to piss off and let himself go to destructive ires assimilable to pre-adolescent crises. Bella-child is led and possessed by men, in a black and white quarter film multiplying the inserts of irritating and repetitive music, but never falling into the quasi-voyeuristic interest that the theme of theCanineFor example. A simple unease, tenacious but hovering, which infuses this first part...
Then little by little, Bella turns to be able to doronism. If a persistent disorder of a very oedipian connivance with the father/creator settles, a stage of development is reached: the image abandons its classy black and white to adorn itself with a palette of colors all more vivid than each other. If Lánthimos had used us to a glacial cinema that was parasitic to its palette of colours (Canineand its only chromatic burst based on haemoglobin,The Lobsterand its landscapes washed up by rain, the icy monotony of the corridors ofKilling the sacred deer), the one which finally points inPoor creaturesbursts, sweats, infuses the interiors as much as the exteriors... The finally agreed "fearing buttocks" seem to trigger a late cognitive development at Bella, but also a new momentum in a film that is seriously moving.
And Bella initiates the ascent of the scale of child development, passing anal stages, phallic (a Freudian concept therefore necessarily phallo-centric), genital... And fuelled by her encounters, experiences, readings and experience of the world, Bella will be able to pull out of the strange dominating and masculine matrix in which she was (re)born. Yet, the sex debauchery ofPoor creaturesDon't stop there... Indeed, in its discovery of the world, Bella will eventually land without a penny in Paris and discover the magic of prostitution.
Frankenhooker
IfFrank Henlotter led his mad scientist to wander 42nd Street to delight his prostitutes to cut in order to create his proto-new girlfriend inFrankenhooker(available onShadowz), Lánthimos initiates the opposite movement: it is his own Frankenstein who will sell his body in Parisian brothels. An excuse to draw an avalanche of explicit scenes all more bizarre than each other? Maybe. The last step towards total sexual emancipation, too. Apotheotic segment by conjugation of a rhythmic music of orgasmic ahanements and slamming of flesh to visual debauchery of plural bodies, repetitionad nauseamturning to the sudden and poetic conclusion of a film that will have filled us with mirettes for more than two hours twenty.
Feminist rearmament
The artistic direction of the feature will give the tournis. Bastard mixture between aTerry Gilliamat the top of its shape and aTim Burtonunder psilocybine,Poor creaturesdeploys a simili-Terre steampunk with missing time markers (is the Eiffel Tower under construction or half destroyed?), crushed by sneezing leak lines and skies that even Pink Floyd acid would not show us. A temporal interference is all the more interesting as the film's discourse on female emancipation is not reduced to the carcan of an era, on the contrary. In fact, the recent events that have shaken the world of cinema and the politics of a startup power that feels, despite its ambiance of modernity, ever more old France and the frelate virilism, unfortunately reminds us of the importance of such a palabra today still...
In addition, Emma Stone continues to dig the path of a career that places her increasingly as one of the most interesting American actresses to follow, both by the peaks ofRingwhich she dares to explore (The Curseplace itself without hesitation at the pantheon of the most exciting series of 2023) than by its future projects (it should appear in the nextAri Aster, Eddington, but also in the next Lánthimos already shot). It is therefore more than time to discoverPoor creaturesand catch up with the filmography of the Greek director, who has sinceCaninea sacred alignment of masterpieces...
Bonus
Pworks creaturesYou're still mad at yourself? We understand you... And besides, if there is a recurring reproach to apologise to the work of Lánthimos at least sinceAlps, it is sometimes his will to accumulate and of a slightly too much length, flaw which could also be attributed toPoor creatureswhich would have gained more intensity by amputating a few dozen minutes... Why not look at the shorts of the Greek director, including the recentNimic, shot for MUBI in 2019?
A mutic work of just 12 minutes, where aMatt Dillon (The House that Jack Buildt) father of family finds himself trapped in a strange mirror game with an unknown encounter in the metro (Daphne Patakia). Ludic and insidious,Nimicplunges his spectator into an environment of all-coming depersonalized to the extreme, inviting him also to take part in this mysterious "recover the seven mistakes" with otherwise more disastrous consequences. Intriguing, ultra short and effective, a perfect pre-session before viewing the awesomePoor creatures. And just wait impatientlyKinds of Kindness, the next Lánthimos with Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, which should take the form of an anthological film ! He even whispers that the feature film would already be shot, so we should not have to wait too long before we can discover it...
I reserve this criticism after viewing as soon as I return from Gérardmer! But my little finger tells me it smells good!
As Arthur's little official finger, I confirm the movie is really upsetting. It's not often that you see such a catchy movie, which makes you feel a lot of emotions in such a short time. 🙂
Hehe too cool if you liked it! I haven't seen "The Favorite", but I'm quite surprised at this turn in Lanthimos' career (and I'm especially happy with the rest...).
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