A story about re-activating a dead woman with her unborn baby’s brain was always going to make for a strange film but if weird is what you want, Poor Things will not disappoint, writes Adrian Pennington.
The heroine lives in a “dystopian version of a Merchant Ivory film, with the idea of a grand tour,” according to McNamara in the film’s production notes.
Lanthimos set his fellow heads of department a task, which was to make it all as hand-crafted and free of digital trickery as possible. Among other things this entailed shooting it all in a studio - the old-fashioned way - with gigantic sets, shooting on 35mm film using resuscitated filmmaking techniques.
“Yorgos really wanted to create from whole cloth,” Ryan said. “Things weren’t meant to feel real or verité. It’s got its own angle, its own quirk.”
Ryan is best known for his work with Andrea Arnold on Fish Tank (2009), American Honey (2016) and forthcoming release...
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