'Poor Things' from filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos appears to be the big, early favorite at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. The project is a whimsical, adult-themed gothic fable that stars Emma Stone in a potentially career-defining performance. The film brought the house down at its first two press screenings ahead of its world premiere in Italy Friday night, with several moments of dark comedy becoming huge applause lines.
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00:00 Good evening. Her brain and her body are not quite synchronized,
00:03 but she is progressing at an accelerated pace.
00:08 Poor Things from filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos appears to be the big early favorite at the
00:13 2023 Venice Film Festival. The project is a whimsical, adult-themed gothic fable that
00:18 stars Emma Stone in a potentially career-defining performance. The film brought the house down at
00:23 its first two press screenings ahead of its world premiere in Italy Friday night,
00:26 with several moments of dark comedy becoming huge applause lines.
00:30 Poor Things marks the first film from Lanthimos since The Favorite, which also starred Stone.
00:35 The Favorite premiered to raves at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and went on to receive
00:39 Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Judging by the early reception in
00:43 Venice, Poor Things looks certain to launch Lanthimos and Stone back into the middle of
00:47 this year's awards season conversation. "I am Bella Baxter, and there is a world to enjoy.
00:54 Circumnavigate. It is the goal of all to progress."
00:57 An adaptation of the novel of the same name, Poor Things follows Stone's character Bella Baxter,
01:02 a young Victorian woman who has been crudely brought back to life by a mad scientist,
01:06 played by Willem Dafoe. Regaining her footing in the world, she runs off with a lawyer,
01:10 played by Mark Ruffalo, on a surrealistic odyssey of self-discovery and liberation.
01:15 While stars Stone, Ruffalo and Dafoe were unable to attend the festival due to the SAG afterstrike,
01:20 Lanthimos spoke about working with Stone on the studio title during the film's press conference.
01:25 "So while we were making The Favorite with Emma, I already had it in mind and I thought,
01:31 I think we had started already working on the script with Tony McNamara, and I mentioned it to
01:37 her as soon as we finished The Favorite and she was extremely excited about the notion of playing
01:43 this character and she wanted to be involved as much as possible. So from then on I kept her in
01:50 the loop on all the drafts and all the ideas about designing the world and all the people that we
01:59 were going to be working together and other actors and I think that actually helped her a lot too
02:05 with even her performance as well because she kept this idea in her mind for a long time."
02:13 For much more from the Venice Film Festival, go to THR.com. This is The Hollywood Reporter News.
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