Poor Things Review

The conceit hands Lanthimos something he has never had before, a protagonist with no shame to satirise, and the film takes its charge from watching an intelligence assemble itself in public. Emma Stone plays the whole development curve without ever signalling a stage change, moving from motor chaos to appetite to argument, and the physical comedy of the first act is as good as anything she has done. Robbie Ryan shoots Godwin's house in a warped black and white that flattens into fisheye whenever Bella's perception outruns the room, then floods Lisbon and the ship in artificial colour that never pretends to be a place.

Mark Ruffalo is very funny as a seducer who is entirely outclassed, and Willem Dafoe finds real grief under the prosthetics. Tony McNamara's dialogue is the best it has been. The brothel section makes an argument about sex work that the film is too pleased with itself to examine properly, and the Alexandria interlude is where the whimsy thins. Even so, nothing else this year was built with this much invention per minute.