Poor Creatures is Emma Stone’s tale of liberation from her social prisons

Of the certainties we have in life, the only one that is really consistent is that we are going to die. We are born, we live as best we can, and eventually we die. In the meantime, we try to understand the world around us, grow within it, grow beyond it if possible, and chart the path to what brings us satisfaction, what brings us happiness, another constant of human existence.

In Poor Creatureswhich hits Brazilian cinemas this Thursday, February 1st, with 11 Oscar nominations, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone, La La Land: Singing Seasons) knows happiness in its purest form, through the satisfaction of small daily pleasures. Born from a private tragedy, she is a child in a woman’s body, with all the innocence and curiosity that this phase carries, and lives under the care of her guardian, Dr. Godwin Baxterbetter known as God (Willem Dafoe, The headlight).

Bella He barely knows how to speak, but he knows that everything he does has one goal: to make her happy. It is happiness that leads her to explore her own body, for example, as her mentality matures. Almost a consequence, sexual discovery leads her to want to explore the world, especially after her path crosses with that of the lawyer. Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight: Secrets Revealed), who invites her to explore the world with the desire to take advantage of the young girl’s innocence for his own pleasure.

Initially, the new film Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The favorite), based on the novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray, is quite disconcerting. Compared to Frankensteinin Mary Shelley, the story features an eccentric doctor, responsible for the craziest experiments, such as the union of different species into a new and unique animal, such as a chicken-dog or a duck-dog. Your most perfect creation, Bella Baxternor does it shy away from the bizarre, which is strange at first sight.

In contrast, when Bella decides to leave his “prison” and set out to see the world, the situation changes drastically: the black and white that covers the entire first part of the film comes out and color, the playful, the fantastic enters, in a world that, in a first moment, besides being beautiful, seems perfect.

However, sheShe soon discovers that, outside the mansion, there are restraints trying to restrain her at all times. She cannot eat or drink as much as she wants, speak her mind, dance, flirt or even have sex with whoever or whenever she wants. Bellathen, when confronted by ghosts from the past, she decides that, wherever she is, she will always be free.

Poor Creatures it is such a breathtaking work that trying to put it into words is an absurdly difficult task. It is necessary to witness how all the elements of the film – the script Tony McNamarathe photograph of Robbie Ryanthe soundtrack of Jerskin Fendrix and the impeccable performances of Emma Stone It is Mark Ruffalo – work perfectly under the supervision of Lanthimos.

In previous productions, such as The Lobster (2015) and The favorite (2018), the filmmaker had already explored the strangeness of the stories he chose to tell, presenting an unusual point of view, but always without complicating things, allowing the viewer to follow the development of the plot without getting lost in the journey.

In Poor Creatureswhich manages to be its story more out of reality and, even so, closer to the human experience and, especially, to the experience of women, this admirable characteristic of Lanthimos is still present and, if the film leaves you speechless at the end of the session, it is not because of the lack of them, but because of the cascade that it creates, but dies when it reaches the tip of your tongue, because any description would reduce the experience too much.

Every year we have great productions hitting cinema screens around the world, but it is rare to have the opportunity to see a work as imposing as Poor Creatureswhich reminds us of the power of this art and makes us cry out for more. “Cinema is the greatest fun”said the facade of Cine São Luiz, in Recife, Pernambuco, portrayed in Ghost Portraits (2023), by Kleber Mendonça Filho. And it is. Long live cinema!

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