Poor Things (Movie)

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      From ‘Poor Things’ to ‘Barbie,’ a Crybaby Year for Men in the Movies

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      In 2023, male characters pouted elaborately after something they saw as their birthright was put in check.I’ve seen the greatest men of my generation regress into petulant babies — at least in the movies. Over and over in this year’s films, male characters throw elaborate temper tantrums, whining, huffing and raging like toddlers in their terrible twos.At Sundance in January, I joined the audience in cackling at “Fair Play,” in which a bratty finance guy devolves into a childish display of irascibility. Come summer, I saw the trend expand with the boffo success of “Barbie,” in which Ryan Gosling’s Ken makes an entire career out of pouting on the beach. And the fall saw a preschool’s worth of new baby men in “Poor Things,” “Dream Scenario” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” and one great baby man of history in “Napoleon.”The meltdowns themselves varied — one barked like a dog, another blasted music, a few made faces, most yelled, many cried — but the trigger was the same: a perceived loss of power to a woman.In “Poor Things,” that male torment is played for farce. Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) has only recently discovered orgasms when she meets Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a local rake who piques her interest. Their bond is simple: he is besotted; she relishes his sexual prowess. But trouble arrives when the pair voyages abroad and Bella, eager to indulge in new cuisines, sights and lovers, tires of Duncan’s micromanaging. She tries to send the stage five clinger packing, but he keeps popping up, alternating between profanity-laden outbursts and beseeching appeals to reciprocate his devotion.“I am not understanding this complicated feeling,” Bella remarks dispassionately at one point, as Duncan snivels over her sleeping with another man. The line lands as a joke; Duncan’s weepy reaction is entirely uncomplicated. But Bella’s confusion also hits on something real. Duncan doesn’t own Bella, as much as he would like to, and he sees himself as the victim of that reality.The comedy in “Fair Play,” directed by Chloe Domont, is cast in a darker tone, and centers not on concerns about sex, but career. Here, our petulant man is Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), a hedge fund analyst who, early in the movie, loses out on a promotion to his fiancée, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor). This means that Luke reports to Emily, while she wins coveted face time with the boss.To Luke, a silver-spoon-fed nepotism hire, nothing could be more intolerable. “I think I’m handling everything pretty well, given the circumstances,” he snarls at Emily before shrieking about how she “stole” his job.Luke makes his thinking clear: He wanted the promotion, so it belonged to him. This delusion of entitlement is echoed, to an extent, in Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” a tremendous work of drama that follows a novelist, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), after the sudden death of her husband, Samuel (Samuel Thesis). Samuel was also a fiction writer, albeit a more stagnant one, and openly resented Sandra’s success.In one crucial flashback, Samuel instigates a domestic scuffle with his wife. As the quarrel escalates, Samuel calls her selfish, chastises her for not learning his native language and accuses her of stealing his book premise. Finally, he prods, “I’ve given you too much — too much time, too many concessions. I want this time back and you owe it to me.”The gender dynamics of “Anatomy” are thornier than those in “Fair Play,” but the two films play well side by side. Triet and Domont share an interest in how power seesaws in contemporary straight relationships. By positioning their couples within the same professions and then pushing them to the brink, the filmmakers are conducting a kind of test. In this more equitable era, how do men and women balance being a good partner with self-realizing? At what point does envy trump affection? Is there any going back after it does?These are familiar questions with murky answers. The past decade has seen a cavalcade of bloated, juvenile men throw hissy fits after something they saw as their birthright — authority, prestige, admiration — was put in check. These spectacles can be sinister, pathetic and comical all at once, a semi-contradiction that movies, designed to pull in both directions, are ideally suited to dissect.No film this year synthesized these ideas more plainly than one about a plastic doll. Near the end of “Barbie,” once the Kens unlink arms and Gosling’s Ken stomps into the Dreamhouse, Barbie (Margot Robbie) hurries to comfort him. He sobs. She says she likes him as a friend. And then the pair agree to dismantle Barbieland’s system of male supremacy and instate a more just society.Wiping away tears, Ken confesses, “To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest anyway.” It’s funny to think it could be so easy. It’s excruciating to know it’s really not so hard. More

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      The Year of the Mega Sleeve

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      Raglan, fluted, leg o’ mutton, bishop, puffed, balloon — whatever you want to call them, we wore them.When Holly Waddington, the costume designer for “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s much heralded phantasmagorical film about a young women’s psychological and sexual awakening that opened on Friday, began thinking about what her heroine would wear, she said she was thinking “skinny arms and these kind of straight skirts with the big bustle.”The film, which is based on a 1992 book by Alasdair Gray and stars Emma Stone, is set in an unidentified time period that is sort of like the 1880s — if the 1880s took place in an alternate dimension in which time folded in on itself, so the past was also the future. In part, that’s why Ms. Waddington was drawn to a silhouette that was slim on top and exaggerated at the bottom.Also, it’s “quite phallic,” she said, “and that felt right.” Mr. Lanthimos had other ideas.“He said, ‘It’s about the sleeve,’” Ms. Waddington recalled. And so, indeed, it is.Ms. Stone amid a sea of ruffled sleevage.Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight PicturesPuffed, ruffled and ruched to bulbous extremes, the sleeves worn by Ms. Stone’s character, Bella Baxter, are impossible to ignore. About 15.5-inches wide, they bounce across the screen in every scene like giant hot air balloons or supersize mammaries, bigger than her head, absurd and weirdly alluring, dainty and dominant. They are “vast,” Ms. Waddington said. “Huge.”But monumental as they are, they are also utterly on trend. “There’s something in the air,” Ms. Waddington said. “Yorgos was very tuned into that.” It’s not the marketing tsunami that was Barbie pink; it’s merely one of those cosmic moments when fashion and culture collide.Forget the power shoulder: 2023 was the year of the power sleeve. No matter the exact style — puffed, bishop, fluted, belled, leg o’ mutton, statement, mega, dramatic — all that really mattered was that it was big. Off screen as well as on.We have, said Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of Schiaparelli, “hit peak sleeve.”Sleeves, Sleeves, EverywhereStyle watchers began talking about a sleeve sweep at the end of 2022. “Forget what you knew about the statement sleeve,” the influential Italian boutique Luisa Via Roma proclaimed on its website. “This season, the style is more dramatic and bolder than ever.” The fall ready-to-wear shows were filled with sleeves — brushing the floor at Balenciaga and Rodarte; bowling ball-size at Thom Browne; rounded and sculptural at Schiaparelli.By Oscar time, sleeve mania had migrated onto the red carpet thanks to Florence Pugh, who wore a palatial puff-sleeve Valentino taffeta robe atop shorts; Jessie Buckley, in a Shakespearean-sleeve black-lace gown by Rodarte; and Mindy Kaling, whose white Vera Wang dress had detachable gauntlets-cum-sleeves.Puffed up: Clockwise from top left, Florence Pugh in Valentino; Kendall Jenner in Marc Jacobs; Jessie Buckley in Rodarte; and Michelle Yeoh in Lagerfeld. Nina Westervelt and Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAt the Met Gala in May, Kendall Jenner wore a sequined Marc Jacobs look in which the designer seemed to have taken all the fabric from what would have been the pants and transferred it to the sleeves. (Also joining the statement sleeve set: Michelle Yeoh, Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne.)Then Vogue put Carey Mulligan on its November cover in a peachy gown from the Louis Vuitton 2024 resort collection that had such complicated sleeves it looked as if she’d stuck her arms elbow-deep into two giant cream puffs. And then came “Poor Things” with what Ms. Waddington called its “commitment to sleeves.”Little wonder that in January, the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology will kick off its 2024 programming with “Statement Sleeves,” an exhibition of almost 80 pieces from the permanent collection that will focus on how sleeves serve as “signifiers of status, taste and personality,” according to a news release. And though they cycle in and out of fashion, so it has always been.Arms and the WomanBig sleeves have been a part of dress for almost as long as there has been dress. Colleen Hill, the curator of costume and accessories at FIT, who is behind the museum’s sleeves show, said the world’s oldest woven garment — a V-neck linen shirt from the fourth millennium B.C., now in the collection of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London — includes knife-pleated sleeves. During the Renaissance, sleeves were often the most elaborate part of a dress, as well as detachable; grooms often gave sleeves to their new brides.Sleeves became even more prominent in the Elizabethan, Victorian and Edwardian eras. By the 1830s there were so many different sleeve shapes and names, Ms. Hill said, that a woman’s sewing guide from the period stated, in effect, “we’re not going to give you all the styles of sleeves because it is impossible.”Carey Mulligan got big sleeves for her Vogue cover in November. VogueMs. Waddington said that when she was researching these periods for “Poor Things,” she went into fashion archives and discovered sleeves so extreme they were almost unbelievable. “This is the thing that fascinates me about historical dress,” she said. “The shapes are wild.” What looks like science fiction, she added, actually comes from “a 19th-century pattern.”Sleeves got big again in the 1940s thanks to designers like Adrian, the Hollywood couturier whose giant ruffled sleeves were a favorite of a young Joan Crawford and a precursor to the equally giant shoulder pads of World War II. And sleeves made a famous return in the 1980s, thanks in part to Princess Diana and the enormous fairy-tale-on-steroids sleeves of her wedding gown.It’s probably not an accident that the episodes of “The Crown” that focus on Diana, including the recreation of her wedding dress, have coincided with the return of big sleeves. Simon Porte Jacquemus specifically name-checked Diana as the inspiration for his fall 2023 show, which featured inflated sleeves. He said he was obsessed with her “dramatic round puffy sleeves.”“It shaped her silhouette in a sensuous way, but still with a poetic and naïve ’80s touch,” he said.What’s in a Sleeve?At first it may have seemed that pandemic lockdowns and the ascension of comfort clothing would kill the big sleeve. But the way that altered reality shrank our interactions to the size of a computer monitor may actually have turbocharged the trend.“We’re so often seen onscreen these days from the waist up, and sleeves are a way to stand out,” Ms. Hill said.Ms. Waddington said much the same, noting that the torso “is what the camera sees most of the time, so the information needs to be happening between the waist and the head.” And how much better when it is conveyed at volume. Or, rather, in volumes.Indeed, Mr. Roseberry said, sleeves “draw the attention upward to the face and the person wearing the garment.”Maximalist sleeves at Thom Browne. Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesSleeves like a giant circle at Schiaparelli.SchiaparelliSleeves to the floor at Rodarte.Kessler StudioNo matter what, Mr. Lanthimos said, “they really make an impression.” Sleeves are inclusive: They can be worn by myriad bodies in myriad ways and exist at myriad prices. They are theatrical. (Forget talking with your hands; talking with your arms is much more effective.) And they can be resonant of sexuality, safety and strength.That makes sleeves the rare design element that is equally showy and swaddling. Simone Rocha, whose balloon sleeves walk a fine line between childlike and sensuous and have become something of a design signature, said she was drawn to the way “the proportion sculpts around the body almost like a cocoon, creating a sense of security.” Also: big, puffy sleeves are old-fashioned and contemporary at the same time, speaking to history and, she said, “the pragmatic feeling of a work-wear bomber.”Whatever the association, however, the result is universal: “In an upside-down world, emphasizing your physicality in space, taking up room, is a way of asserting yourself,” Mr. Roseberry said. “Of giving yourself importance.”Ms. Waddington agreed. “I think that they’re about empowerment,” she said. Which is, in the end, the hero’s journey of “Poor Things,” and the heart of its emotional appeal.“I feel like I’d quite like to wear big sleeves now,” Ms. Waddington said. More

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      Watch Emma Stone Do a Carefree Dance in ‘Poor Things’

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      The director Yorgos Lanthimos narrates this sequence that puts the star and Mark Ruffalo awkwardly on the dance floor.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.How do you go about choreographing a dance sequence for a character who has never danced before? That was the challenge in this moment from “Poor Things,” which stars Emma Stone as a woman with the mind of a baby who, moment by moment, begins to find her footing.In this scene, Bella Baxter (Stone) is at dinner with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), her beau of sorts. As she hears the beat of the music and sees others dancing, Bella’s body begins to instinctively move. Suddenly, she’s on the dance floor herself, doing moves she seems to be inventing that are both oddball and intriguing.“The dance, because she’s doing it for the first time, just felt like it should be something quite primitive, slightly babylike,” the film’s director, Yorgos Lanthimos, said in an interview.He collaborated with the choreographer Constanza Macras, with whom he also worked on “The Favourite,” to create the right mix of synergy and chaos in the movement.Lanthimos said that he and the cinematographer Robbie Ryan used a wide-angle lens on a camera mounted on a large metal dolly as they followed the stars. Not only did the movements need to be choreographed, but the cast also had to dance around the roving camera in a way that ensured nobody got hurt.Read the “Poor Things” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos on ‘Poor Things’

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      It’s one thing to cry while performing. Emma Stone can do that. What she doesn’t want to do, and what she found herself doing anyway, is to cry in the middle of an interview.“I’m such an actor, what is wrong with me?” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.It was mid-November in Los Angeles and we were out to lunch with Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek director with whom Stone has made the cockeyed comedies “The Favourite” and now “Poor Things,” which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September and is tipped to be a major Oscar contender when it’s released Dec. 8. Based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, “Poor Things” casts Stone as Bella Baxter, who may have the cinematic year’s most outrageous origin story: Trapped in an unhappy marriage, she throws herself off a bridge and is resurrected by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) who swaps her brain for that of her unborn baby.Stone gets plenty of comic mileage out of playing this full-grown woman with the mind of a child, but Bella’s eventual arc is breathtaking: As she gains sentience, embarks on a sexual and political awakening, and strives toward independence, Bella must navigate the hapless suitors (played by the likes of Mark Ruffalo and Ramy Youssef) who are drawn to her maverick spirit but also seek to possess her. This is a character who has meant more to Stone than most — “I just love her so much,” she told me — though she tried to laugh off how talking about “Poor Things” sometimes moved her to tears.“I’m tired, that’s all it is,” Stone said.In addition to “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” Lanthimos, 50, and Stone, 35, have collaborated on the short film “Bleat” as well as “And,” a comic anthology due next year. “I obviously have full-blown, very intense trust in him,” she said, “and as an actor, it’s the best feeling ever, because it’s so rare that you feel like whatever you do, you’re protected by your director.”Scenes from a collaboration: Stone in Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” left, “The Favourite” and “Bleat.”Searchlight Pictures; Lanthimos facilitates that trust with a long rehearsal process that has more in common with improv comedy than you might expect: The actors recite their lines while doing log rolls, walking backward or closing their eyes. “We never rehearse as in, ‘OK, how are you going to do the scene and let’s just act it out,’” Lanthimos said. “It’s more about creating this atmosphere of camaraderie and having fun, getting to know each other so we can be comfortable with ridiculing ourselves.”Some actors forge long-term relationships with auteurs that require sacrificing what has made them into movie stars: To ascend to a more prestigious plane, comedians furrow their brows, beauties cake themselves in dirt and teen idols talk of torturing themselves in the name of their craft. But with Lanthimos, Stone has not had to give up the comic timing and innate empathy that are her greatest gifts as an actor. She instead puts those talents to use in new and daring ways under her director’s unique eye.Still, this fruitful partnership makes for an unusual duo in person: Where Lanthimos is impassive and a man of few words, his leading lady is wide-eyed, warm and eager to connect. Or, as Stone put it, “I’m a girl from Arizona and he’s a guy from Athens. I don’t know how this worked, because our personalities could not be more different, but it’s amazing.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.When did the two of you first meet?EMMA STONE It was June of 2015, in a cafe. I was in rehearsals for “La La Land,” and I met him to talk about “The Favourite.” I thought he was going to be really scary and twisted, and he isn’t. It was a very comfortable and easy conversation and we got along right away.You thought he might be a more intimidating presence?STONE Having seen the films that he had made up until that point, yeah.YORGOS LANTHIMOS What a cliché.STONE I was 26! I was but a child. But from then on, we kept in touch and got to know each other a little bit. By the time we were making “The Favourite,” we had a rapport and the beginning of our friendship, and then by the end of shooting it, we started talking about “Poor Things.”Stone says of her “Poor Things” role: “My God, she’s the greatest character I’ll probably ever get to play.”Thea Traff for The New York TimesYorgos, what was going on in your life when you first read “Poor Things”?LANTHIMOS I had just moved to London and started meeting people about English-language projects. It was after “Dogtooth” [2010] was nominated for an Oscar, and people started taking interest.STONE [teasing] Nominated for an Oscar. Everybody was like, “Whoa, this guy’s so great!”LANTHIMOS But when I started showing “Poor Things” to people, it was rejected many times for development.What reason did they give?LANTHIMOS “It’s too weird, too strange.” Back then, there was a notion of, “Oh, we’ll get a European or non-American filmmaker to do something conventional, they’ll just bring their own twist to it.”STONE That still happens.LANTHIMOS So that was quite a disappointment because I was very naïve in meeting people and them saying, “Oh my God, ‘Dogtooth’ is amazing, we want to do things with you.” And then I would produce “The Lobster” [2016] and they would go, “Oh, no, no, we’re not talking about something like this. Don’t you want to do something more normal?”Emma, how did Yorgos pitch this project to you?STONE He gave me sort of the brass-tacks overview of Bella, what she goes through and what the men in her life experience as a response to how she’s evolving. And I was just like, “Sign me up.” My God, she’s the greatest character I’ll probably ever get to play.What is it about this character that’s so beguiling?LANTHIMOS She’s unlike anyone.STONE She’s drinking up the world around her in such a unique and beautiful way that I just dream I could. I find her so inspiring, and living in that every day throughout that whole process was just the greatest gift — it’s the most joy I’ve ever gotten to have as a character. Every person that exists has so much that built them up to what they are in adulthood, and it was interesting to discover that if you strip all that away, all that’s left is joy and curiosity.We meet Bella when she’s not far into her brain swap: Formerly an adult woman named Victoria Blessington, she’s now like a full-grown baby, impulsive and childlike. What was it like to embody that phase?STONE Tough. That was the hardest stage for me, just because that’s where she’s at her most primitive. Acting is inherently embarrassing — this, as a job, is just silly and you can feel really stupid. Thankfully, with Yorgos, it’s much more freeing and I feel confident because we can quickly get to, “I guess this one’s not working, let’s go somewhere else.” Also, I can cry to him if I’m freaking out about something, which I have many times.We’d been working on this for so many years, and to actually commit it to film is always terrifying. I find the first two weeks of filming anything really difficult because you’re still finding your footing and the tone of what it actually is in practice, not just the idea of it. So the first week was really challenging to just give myself over to it and trust the process of it, and I think you felt the same way.LANTHIMOS Yeah.STONE We were talking about it every day, and I was like, “What am I doing?” You were like, “I don’t know.” We were both figuring out who she was.A scene from “Poor Things.” Stone and Lanthimos have been discussing the film since shooting “The Favourite” (2018).Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight PicturesHow does your trust in one another extend to how you filmed Bella’s sexual awakening?STONE It simplifies everything. Whenever there was a scene like that, it was only four people in the room, other than whatever actor might be in there. There was Yorgos and our [director of photography] Robbie Ryan, who looks at me like I am a lamp — he’s seen me naked so many times, it’s so beyond nothing — and then Hayley [Williams, the first assistant director], and Olga [Abramson], our focus puller. That was the room.LANTHIMOS Sometimes not even sound. We would rig mics when we could and we wouldn’t even have a boom operator there. So it’s just very intimate.STONE And also, an amazing intimacy coordinator [Elle McAlpine]. Stupidly, at the beginning, I was like, “It’s fine [without one], I’ve known you for so many years.” And then once it came to actually doing all those scenes, having her there was so wonderful — she really made the energy so calm and professional. But it was weird ultimately to see the movie because doing those scenes was such an intimate experience and then I was like, “Right, that’s in the movie!”But I mean, that’s Bella. She has no shame about her body and her sexuality and who she is, and I am so proud of that aspect of the film.Does it embolden you to stay in that space?STONE Just to stay naked all the time? Yeah. I’m going to be a nudist now, I’m emboldened!I meant Bella’s head space. Do you feel emboldened when you spend so much time in a character free from shame?STONE I wish I could say yes. It has stuck with me in some capacities, and if I could live as Bella, I would love to. It’s really hard when you have your own history to deal with, which seemingly everybody has except for her. But I find her so inspirational in general that I’m always trying to think if I could be a little bit more like her.Yorgos, you acted in the Greek film “Attenberg” earlier in your career, which required you to take part in some sex scenes. Did that give you a unique perspective on directing them?LANTHIMOS For me, that aspect was never an issue. Sex in movies, or nudity — I just never understood the prudishness around it. It always drives me mad how liberal people are about violence and how they allow minors to experience it in any way, and then we’re so prudish about sexuality. To me, what was difficult about being an actor was that there was a lot of waiting around, and that’s why, when I make films, I try to have the least amount of business possible: No lights, no gear, no nothing. Nobody goes anywhere, nobody leaves. There’s no time to smoke a cigarette, because we just keep on going.STONE That’s why you have to switch to vaping.Lanthimos has appeared as an actor in film with sex scenes. “Sex in movies, or nudity — I just never understood the prudishness around it,” he said.Thea Traff for The New York TimesEmma, do you want something different out of your projects now than you did in your 20s?STONE I hope that when it comes to projects or characters that it’ll always be a surprise and slightly scary. But also, how scary can it be? It’s acting, I’m not saving any lives. It’s such a lucky thing to be able to do, so to sit here as an actor and be like, “This was so hard,” is crazy.LANTHIMOS I think about that as well. “Oh, I’m making films, what’s so incredibly difficult about that?” But I do have a horrible time. The stress.STONE He’s really miserable while we’re filming.LANTHIMOS Yeah, it’s insane. It’s immense.And it hasn’t gone away over time?STONE It’s gotten worse.LANTHIMOS You try to rationalize it: “Why are you so upset? This is a movie.” Of course, when you compare it with other things that are happening in the world, it’s ridiculous. But for you, in that moment, it’s everything.STONE Also, a lot of times you’re on location. You’re away from your quote-unquote real life, you’re working so many hours a day, and it’s so consuming.So how did it feel to near the end of an all-consuming project like “Poor Things”?STONE I was a mess. Oh my God, I was devastated. I couldn’t even get through the scenes we were shooting on the last day because I was crying so much.You didn’t want to let go?STONE I wanted to be done because we were exhausted, but I really didn’t want to be done. It was such an important experience to me that it makes me sad now thinking about it.LANTHIMOS The last day was in the studio, and we did her jumping off the bridge.STONE I’m getting teary. I’m sorry, this is so stupid. Bizarre. That last day, I did the jump that Victoria does off the bridge when she’s pregnant, and I was so emotional. You can imagine, if I’m sitting here years later like this!I said to Hayley, our A.D., “Oh my God, this is so sad. I’m shooting a suicide, and it’s the end of the movie after this whole joyful experience.” And she said, “No, this is the birth of Bella.” I was like, “It is the birth of Bella! Because Victoria being gone is the birth of Bella.” It’s so nice to end on that.[Wiping her eyes.] Yeah. Anyway, it was cool. No big deal. Fun movie, we had a good time, it was just a paycheck. More

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      With Striking Actors Off-Limits, Directors Get Their Close-Ups

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      Since striking movie stars are not allowed to promote studio films, filmmakers unexpectedly, and in some cases uneasily, have the spotlight to themselves.For more than half a century, a coterie of critics and filmmakers has been making the case for what’s known as auteur theory: the idea that great directors are the central creative forces behind their films, shaping them just as authors shape their books.But outside a relatively small pantheon of great filmmakers, most directors have continued to be overshadowed, at least in the public eye, by their movie stars.The Hollywood strikes are changing that.With striking actors forbidden by their union from promoting studio films, directors suddenly have the spotlight largely to themselves, if somewhat reluctantly. They have been the main attractions at recent film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto and on press tours that were once organized around A-list movie stars.Even star vehicles must be promoted without their stars. With Denzel Washington, one of the most recognizable names in Hollywood, and his co-star, Dakota Fanning, unable to promote the third installment of the “Equalizer” series, it fell to the director, Antoine Fuqua, to go on a one-man press tour.“It’s a strange time,” Fuqua told a TV news reporter ahead of the movie’s Sept. 1 premiere. “I would love to have them here.”At the Toronto International Film Festival, Q. and A. sessions after screenings typically involve actors and filmmakers, but this year, many of the directors — including Ava DuVernay and Richard Linklater — answered questions alone. Behind-the-scenes figures were suddenly in front of the cameras: As the red carpet at the festival opened, a staff member warned the press and onlookers not to be surprised if they didn’t recognize some of the people posing for photos, assuring them that they were associated with the films.Atom Egoyan, a Canadian filmmaker whose relationship with the Toronto festival goes back 40 years, said the focus on filmmaking over celebrity at this year’s event reminded him of the festival’s earlier years, before the increasing presence of studio films made high-profile Hollywood actors more of a central focus there.“Certainly for auteur filmmakers, it’s been a breath of fresh air,” said Egoyan, whose latest movie, “Seven Veils,” starring Amanda Seyfried, debuted in Toronto last week. “The industry is going through monumental transitions, and so this has been a nice little oasis.”And as the Venice International Film Festival closed earlier this month, the director Yorgos Lanthimos accepted the competition’s top prize for his surrealist comedy “Poor Things” without any of the film’s stars behind him.“Celebrity is always going to sell more than a director,” said David Gerstner, a professor of cinema studies at City University of New York. “But it is a moment in which directors are being given the opportunity to shine, to be the centerpiece. It’s just unfortunate that it’s under these circumstances.”The director David Fincher promoted his Netflix movie “The Killer” at the Venice International Film Festival. Kate Green/Getty Images, via NetflixIt is not necessarily a comfortable position for some of the directors, amid broad social pressure to stand in solidarity with unionized writers and actors against the major entertainment studios they are at odds with.And there are already bubbling tensions: When the union that represents Hollywood directors, the Directors Guild of America, made a deal with the studios in June, keeping them out of the labor unrest, it drew some criticism from striking screenwriters.Caught in the middle of the studios that fund their ambitions and the actors and writers who help realize them, directors tend to tread carefully when discussing the strike.“I can understand both sides,” the director David Fincher said earlier this month at a news conference for the Venice premiere of his movie “The Killer,” whose star, Michael Fassbender, was absent. “I think all we can do is encourage them to talk.”It is a particularly complicated moment for directors who are also actors or writers and hold multiple union memberships.Bradley Cooper, who both directs and stars in “Maestro,” about the conductor Leonard Bernstein, decided not to attend the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival.And Kenneth Branagh — who both directs the new Agatha Christie mystery movie “A Haunting in Venice,” which debuted in theaters this past weekend, and stars in it as the detective Hercule Poirot — has decided to leave interviews about the film to behind-the-scenes figures such as a top producer, the production designer and the composer.Between the multiple roles many artists hold, and the fact that some actors have been given permission by their union, SAG-AFTRA, to promote independent films, the landscape is a bit confusing.“It’s a little bit like the wild west,” said Peter Principato, chief executive of a Hollywood management production company that represents directors, actors and writers.People are making their own calculations, he said: Some are simply following the letter of the rules, which allows multi-hyphenates to promote movies in a director’s capacity, while others are more wary of taking active roles. In some cases, he said, directors are required by their contracts to promote their films.When “Poor Things” won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, its director, Yorgos Lanthimos, was on hand but not its stars. Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersOf course, some directors are as much of a draw as their stars. Few directors attract as much natural interest as Martin Scorsese, whose highly anticipated, Apple-backed film “Killers of the Flower Moon” is slated for release in theaters next month, even if the movie’s stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, are unable to act as the magnets for press that they typically are.And Fuqua, the director of “The Equalizer 3,” has the kind of heightened profile — thanks to a varied career creating music videos for stars like Prince and Stevie Wonder, directing successful Hollywood thrillers, and making documentaries — that can make him a successful emissary for the film, noted Alan Nierob, a publicist for the director. Fuqua promoted the movie by speaking with “Good Morning America” about his career; with movie blogs about the trilogy; and with myriad other publications.The strike is also testing the accepted wisdom of movie marketing. Nierob noted that the limitations around promotion had not appeared to affect the movie’s release; it topped the U.S. box office its first weekend, earning just under $35 million. (Of course, Washington’s name on a movie poster or face in a trailer may do the promotional work as well as any interview.)But it is unusual to see directors carry so much of the promotional weight on their shoulders. With this summer’s Disney horror-comedy “Haunted Mansion” unable to rely on its big-name actors — LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Jamie Lee Curtis among them — its director, Justin Simien, who is also a member of the Writers Guild, went on interviews alone. “I felt pulled at the seams,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.And to promote the superhero film “Blue Beetle,” which topped the box office last month, Warner Bros. sent the director Ángel Manuel Soto to England, Mexico and around the United States, including Puerto Rico, to host screenings and conduct an estimated 100 interviews.The director Ángel Manuel Soto toured England, Mexico and the United States to promote his film “Blue Beetle.”Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt festivals, directors have been faced with questions that, in previous years, they would have sat back and let the actors answer.Lanthimos, whose film “Poor Things” generated buzz at Venice both for its Oscars potential and its many boundary-pushing sex scenes, was the only person at the festival’s news conference who could speak to the movie’s graphic nature and how its lead actress, Emma Stone, had handled it.“It’s a shame that Emma could not be here to speak more about it, because it will be coming all from me,” Lanthimos said at the news conference, where he was flanked by his cinematographer and one of his production designers. He later noted, according to Variety: “We had to be confident Emma had to have no shame about her body, nudity, engaging in those scenes, and she understood that right away.”And at the Telluride Film Festival last month, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the directors of “Nyad,” the Netflix film about the marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, were not only without their stars, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, but without the main subject of the movie, who also happens to be a SAG-AFTRA member.After the film’s first screening, the directors said they wished that Nyad and the movie’s stars could have been there to see it, and share their own perspectives with the audience.“It’s tough to have to try to speak for them,” Chin said.Mekado Murphy contributed reporting from Toronto and Nicole Sperling from Telluride, Colo. More

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      ‘Poor Things’ Takes Top Prize at Venice Film Festival

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      The film, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, stars Emma Stone as a woman who goes on a sexual and philosophical journey. The announcement of its win was met with a roar of applause.“Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on Saturday by a competition jury led by Damien Chazelle. The film stars Emma Stone in a virtuoso performance as a woman with an initially childlike understanding of the world who comes into her own through a sexual and philosophical journey.Bella Baxter, the main character in the film, “wouldn’t exist without Emma Stone,” Lanthimos said. “This film is her, in front of and behind the camera.” Stone previously collaborated with Lanthimos on “The Favourite,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the festival in 2018.Like many other actors in films screened at the festival, Stone was not in attendance, as the strike by SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents television and movie actors, continued.Set in a partly fantastical 19th-century Europe, “Poor Things” follows Bella (Stone) on her eye-opening adventures in Tony McNamara’s adaptation of the 1992 Alasdair Gray novel. The film also stars Willem Dafoe as Bella’s father who is a doctor, Ramy Youssef as his assistant and her suitor, and Mark Ruffalo as a lascivious lawyer.Lanthimos said that the film took “quite a few years” to bring into being, before “the world, or our industry,” was ready for its story. The award announcement was met with a roar of applause.The 80th edition of the festival opened with “Comandante,” a historical drama about an Italian submarine that rescued Belgian sailors during World War II. Other prominent films included “Maestro,” “Priscilla,” “The Killer,” “Ferrari,” “Hit Man,” “Origin,” “El Conde,” “Aggro Dr1ft,” “Coup de Chance,” “Dogman” and William Friedkin’s final film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.”The latest edition received wide acclaim despite advance speculation that the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes in Hollywood might affect the festival’s impact. Stars were largely absent. However, there were exceptions, including Adam Driver and Jessica Chastain, thanks to interim agreements secured with SAG-AFTRA; both actors expressed support for the strikes. But the filmmakers did not disappoint: Before the awards ceremony, crowds chanted “Yorgos! Yorgos!” when the director walked onto the red carpet.The Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize went to “Evil Does Not Exist,” the new film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose film “Drive My Car” won an Academy Award. His latest feature centers on a small town in Japan trying to fend off a planned glamping site.Immigration was a recurring theme among the prizewinners. The Silver Lion for best director went to Matteo Garrone for the immigration drama “Me Captain.” The Special Jury Prize went to Agnieszka Holland for “Green Border,” her multifaceted look at immigration to Poland.The Volpi Cup for best actress was awarded to Cailee Spaeny, who played the titular role in Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” the story of Priscilla Presley’s relationship with Elvis Presley. The best actor award went to Peter Sarsgaard for his role as a man with dementia who is accused of past abuse in Michel Franco’s “Memory.” In his acceptance speech, Sarsgaard spoke movingly against the threat of artificial intelligence. Seydou Sarr won the Marcello Mastroianni Award, given to an outstanding emerging actor, for “Me Captain.”The best screenplay honor was given to “El Conde,” a vampiric reimagining of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, written by Guillermo Calderón and Pablo Larraín, who also directed. “Love Is a Gun,” directed by Lee Hong-Chi, received the Lion of the Future award for best debut feature. “Thank You Very Much,” a playful look at Andy Kaufman, won the Venice Classics award for best documentary on cinema.For the Orizzonti section, another competition slate in the festival, the top prize went to “Explanation for Everything,” an expansive work from the Hungarian director Gabor Reisz. “El Paraiso,” a mother-daughter drama, also won two awards in this section: Margarita Rosa de Francisco won for best actress, and Enrico Maria Artale won for best screenplay. Notably, a Mongolian film, “City of Wind,” was honored for best actor (Tergel Bold-Erdene).This year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement went to Tony Leung Chiu-wai, a star of Hong Kong cinema, and to the director Liliana Cavani, whose film “The Order of Time” played out of competition. The Glory to the Filmmaker Award went to Wes Anderson, whose short film “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” played out of competition. More

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      Venice Film Festival: Emma Stone Is a Bizarro Barbie in ‘Poor Things’

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      In the wild new comedy from Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”), Stone plays a sexually questing woman with the mind of an infant.“What was I made for?”Though that’s a lyric crooned by Billie Eilish during the climax of “Barbie,” it could just as easily be a question asked by Bella Baxter, the protagonist of “Poor Things.” Played by Emma Stone in this new movie from the director Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”), Bella’s back story is a doozy: She’s a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts, saved after suicide when she’s discovered by a demented doctor (Willem Dafoe) who replaces her brain with the one of the unborn child growing inside her.And you thought Barbie’s creation myth was head-spinning!“Poor Things,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, often plays like a wild, art-house remix of Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster doll opus. It, too, is about a sheltered, childlike woman whose quest for knowledge forces her to venture out into the real world, where the complicated politics of gender both appall and fascinate her.But this is no family film: As baby-brained Bella starts to come of age, her lack of inhibitions steers her toward sexual situations that had the Venice moviegoer next to me squirming in his seat.Based on the book by Alasdair Gray and adapted by Tony McNamara (who co-wrote “The Favourite” for Lanthimos and Stone), “Poor Things” introduces Bella shortly after her brain-swap surgery, when she’s still under close observation by Dafoe’s Dr. Godwin Baxter, who has given her his last name, and his mild-mannered assistant McCandles (Ramy Youssef). Quite literally a child in a woman’s body, Bella can barely string words together and is given to shocking outbursts. Even gaining control of her limbs is a challenge: Bella lurches through Baxter’s mansion like a zombie dressed in drag, which I suppose she kind of is.Still, the two men are each beguiled by her, even though the lovestruck McCandles is intimidated by Bella’s dawning self-awareness and erotic curiosity. That presents an opening for the caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who promises to spring her from Baxter’s custody and smuggle her into the real world for a sexual education. But as Bella grows more independent and capable of sophisticated thoughts, all the men who initially spark to her free spirit become increasingly pathetic in their attempts to trap and keep her.Some Venice viewers have crowed that Stone’s go-for-broke character arc all but guarantees her a second Oscar, though I’d apply a lot of caveats to that prediction: This is a wild, eccentric movie full of explicit sex and violence, and older academy voters might bounce off “Poor Things” during the first 20 minutes.Still, the technical aspects of the film are absolutely worth rewarding. Like “Barbie,” it’s a marvel to look at, though the aesthetic is less “dream house” and more “naughty pop-up book.” Filmed with more fish-eye lenses than a Missy Elliott music video, it’s creatively costumed, too: Bella’s signature look — ruffed collar and Elizabethan sleeves on top, inappropriate bloomers on the bottom — is what you might get if you set a time-traveling Lena Dunham loose in the Renaissance.And for moviegoers who found the feminism of “Barbie” to be too introductory, “Poor Things” takes those themes to their R-rated extreme, interrogating gender dynamics and sexuality from nearly every angle (and since this is a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, you know those angles are canted). Bella’s quest for enlightenment will push her from plush suites to whorehouses, but the more hard-earned wisdom she accrues, the more the guys in her orbit will be found lacking. Why shouldn’t she try to remake society in her own image? After all, she’s Bella Baxter. They’re just Men. More