‘Poor Creatures’ review: Bella takes on the world

In fact, Bella is a walking metaphor for what humans need. possessing women, infantilizing them, sexualizing them and shaping them according to their own tastes. But the hero of ‘Poor Creatures’ is too complex, fascinating, funny and human to be understood merely as a symbol of empowerment.

Throughout her journey, Bella stopped stumbling and walked with firm steps, rapidly improving her language skills and, with her mother’s pushing, his inexhaustible curiosity and lustful appetite, He decides to escape to the outside world. What comes next could be described as a sex comedy, but much of the comedic impact of ‘Poor Creatures’ comes from the film’s naturalism. The young woman ignores the protocols of the strict society of the nineteenth century.

While traveling, we also witness the awakening of their social conscience, their hunger for knowledge and their transformation into a rational being. Between Lisbon hotels, luxury cruise ships and Paris brothels -and meanwhile discover the dance ‘pastéis de Betlém’, oysters, literature, alcohol, socialism, evil, Philosophy and the world’s oldest profession are what give film its strange, grotesque, and resonant beauty.

Bella breaks free from her cage and begins consuming the world until she makes it her own, with the same greed, energy and joy that the ‘Poor Creatures’ display when looking after her. The more She learns, the brighter, more colorful and more abundant her environment becomes, and the better this process is explained. Lanthimos displays an exuberant imagination.

The movie includes: electric skies, incredibly hyperreal oceans and baroque retrofuturistic citiescaptured by the camera as it twists, distorts and rotates mercilessly; It offers us so much visual and auditory stimulation that One feels a little drunk after seeing this. But, none of them outshine actress Emma StoneMore than two hours of footage covering the long haul with surprising believability Between wild childhood and wise maturityWe meticulously map this evolution scene by scene through verbal and body language.

Bella is the ideal heroine for a director like Lanthimos, who has struggled throughout his filmography – in films like ‘Canino’ (2009), ‘Lobster’ (2015) and ‘The Favourite’ (2018). Question the systems that organize and structure us. In any case, ‘Poor Creatures’ seems to indicate a new path in his career.

After treating his characters with indifference, disdain and ridicule in all his previous cinemas, here the Greek shows A fervent love not only for Bella, but for Bella as well. While he thinks about conquering his autonomy, he also sincerely invites us celebrate that we have one body and one mindand a huge world where we can explore the enormous possibilities that these qualities offer us.