Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'Poor Things' - Yorgos Lanthimos' delirious masterpiece

When the eccentric and grotesquely scarred scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) takes his student Max McCandles (Rami Yousef) aside after class one day, he asks the fresh-faced apprentice if he’s interested in a secret project of his.

Little does he know quite how unorthodox Baxter’s methods have become...

The confidential experiment in question is Bella (Emma Stone), Dr. Baxter’s creation. She is a young woman brought back to life after a mysterious suicide attempt, and behaves like a blank slate unmoored by social niceties or the prejudices of her times. The specificities of her condition shall not be spoiled here, but safe to say that Bella’s body and mind are not synchronized. Yet.

She is learning, and Baxter needs some assistance.

Confined to their house, Bella throws tantrums, develops language and motor skills, and explores her increasingly insatiable sexual yearnings.

“She grabbed my hairy business!” exclaims housekeeper Mrs. Prim (Vicki Pepperdine), after a breakfast encounter with Bella.

Indeed, she did grab her hairy business, and with the newly unveiled joys of masturbation come an increasing curiosity for the human condition... And all urges only need a little push, which comes in the form of Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a rakish solicitor who recognizes Bella’s expanding hunger for the outside world. The moustachioed cad wastes no time in whisking her away to Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris – with the begrudging avail of the father figure she calls ‘God’, as Baxter realises he cannot keep Bella cooped up any longer.

What starts as an erotic escapade – routinely punctuated by some sessions of “furious jumping” – sees Bella grow progressively aware of the injustices and politics of the world, as well as what