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      The Stories Behind Emma Stone’s Costumes in ‘Poor Things’

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      The designer Holly Waddington breaks down how Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter evolves onscreen, from her childish knickers to her cage-like wedding dress.The designer Holly Waddington had wide latitude in envisioning the costumes for “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s mad comedy starring Emma Stone.“The only brief really was that he didn’t want it to be overtly like a period drama” — the script is set in the 1880s — “and he didn’t want it to be overtly like a science fiction film,” Waddington said. In the movie (a Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival and now an Oscar contender), Stone is a scientist’s creation who evolves from a childlike naïf to a sexually and politically liberated woman.The Greek-born director Lanthimos, known for his surrealist vision, gave Waddington only one reference image: a young designer’s take on “inflatable trousers,” Waddington recalled. When puffed up, they “created this really exaggerated shape, just incredibly curvaceous.” She worked with other departments, like production design and hair and makeup, to finish the look for Stone’s Bella Baxter, whose life changes on a Grand Tour of cities like Lisbon.A lot snapped into focus when Waddington learned that Bella would have long, jet-black hair; an Egon Schiele painting was Lanthimos’s inspiration for that, she said, and it informed her color palette. Another thing to consider, in a movie with a lot of sex scenes: How the clothes come off. “I had many slightly awkward conversations with Yorgos about it,” she said. “He was asking me, how does she have sex in these? I was probably a bit embarrassed. But he’s not, at all.”Waddington knew her Victoriana; she spent years working in a costume house, specializing in archival ladies fashion. But for this film, she cut loose the corsetry — a scary prospect at first, she said, because corsets give period clothes their shape — and mixed eras and materials. Early on, Mrs. Prim, the medical assistant turned nanny, chooses Bella’s wardrobe; then she finds her own style. “The clothes needed to really change with her,” Waddington said.Beyond that, Lanthimos offered conceptual freedom. “He just doesn’t need to have a whole back story,” she said. If it looked good, it flew. Bella’s statement sleeves are already having a moment.In a video interview from her London home, Waddington discussed how, and why, she dressed Stone in three key moments of the movie. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Bella at HomeThe costumes Stone wore in early scenes that took place at home captured her in a more childlike persona.Searchlight PicturesThat look in the house is all based around the idea of her being a very young child at this point. And she’s being dressed by Mrs. Prim, who finds her really annoying. The clothes are not baby clothes, they’re womanly, but applied in this slightly ad hoc fashion, because she has the physicality of a child. Very quickly, things have dissembled and come off. And this is just based on my own observations of children that, even if you’re going to a smart occasion, the clothes, especially from the waist down, often come off. It’s just a slightly discordant, uncomfortable way to dress a woman — like an anxiety dream about going to a job interview wearing a suit at the top and nothing on the bottom, just knickers.The knickers are almost like 1950s nappy covers and they’re highly textured — seersucker. And then there’s this big bodice, a very thick moiré taffeta. The thickness of the cloth is almost too thick for human scale, which is what you get when you look at dolls. Often their fabrics look like marzipan — like cake decoration. Also, the striations in the moiré look to me like the organic marks that you get in flesh.She wears this funny little bustle — one of my favorite things in the film. It’s based on an authentic late Victorian bustle cage which would have been worn underneath the dress to give it volume. What struck me is that it looked super sci-fi.2. Lisbon OutfitWhen Stone’s character arrives in Lisbon, she starts to undergo an awakening.Searchlight PicturesDuring the pandemic, the producers arranged for me to go and meet Emma. I took many different renditions of sleeves with me — big sleeves, medium sized. I took lots of different kinds of knickers. I had an idea about how I wanted it to progress, but it was really in that fitting, trying all these shapes on Emma, that I was able to say, OK, we definitely need a bustle, we need these special 1930s tap pants, which I had just thrown in the suitcase at the last minute. They were a departure from the babyish knickers. In Lisbon, they’re silky and fluid — they’ve grown up and they’re sexy.I knew that I wanted her to step out of the hotel in something really discordant. And I was thinking of that scene in “Taxi Driver” when Jodie Foster steps out into the streets of New York in these hot pants.The ruffly top is based on a modesty piece for Victorian dresses — they filled in the décolletage, but on their own they’re just like a little dickey or bib. And I like the idea that she would just wear that, in its own right, as a blouse. What she’s actually wearing is bits of underwear as her clothes.The boots are a little homage to André Courrèges. In early development, I looked at late ’60s-early ’70s sci-fi costumes, and space age modernism fashion. So those boots are based on this idea of her having her toes free, because she’s just uncontainable — she’s exposing every aspect of her, including her feet. The peep-toe boot would never have happened in Victorian society. They didn’t even show their ankles.The gold, yellow and sky-blue colors are definitely a combination that we associate with many fairy tale characters. She stepped into the world and it opened up to her, sort of a Disney version of how you imagine Lisbon, all pastel. I wanted the clothes to reflect that joy and optimism.3. Wedding DressStone’s character wears elaborate sleeves throughout the movie, including when she dons a wedding dress.Searchlight PicturesI liked the idea of it being a cage, with bands of tubing in delicate silk. So hopefully evoking this sense of entrapment, but you could still see through to her and see her body — that felt important. And also these sleeves.We had this book of patterns from the 1890s, my assistant got it from an antiques dealer on Portobello Market. Patterns from the actual period are much more extreme than how we imagined them. This is a very brief period in fashion when there were huge mutton sleeves. I thought they should be even larger — really massive. And Yorgos was really up for the big sleeves. The wedding dress sleeve is probably about a meter all the way around. They look like balloons.I struggled with the veil because I didn’t feel like it was quite the right thing for this character. But then I took it to Emma on the morning of the shoot, and she grabbed it and got it wrapped around her face in a knot.I quite like the fact that it’s see-through and light and big, and it’s also her favorite costume, because her body felt so free in it. 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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      ‘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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      At Venice Film Festival, Trapped Women and Controlling Men

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      This year’s lineup includes films from Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and Bradley Cooper in which female characters squirm under the thumbs of egocentric men.The press room at the Venice Film Festival has to be the most beautiful film festival press room in the world. Taking over the third floor of the imposing Palazzo del Casinò, the main atrium is a gargantuan, triple-height space carpeted in soft cream, with columns clad in marble extending up past Murano glass chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling windows hung with gold-sheened drapes giving way to a sparkling blue sea. On a clear day — which it almost always is — you imagine that, were it not for the curvature of the earth, you could see forever. Or at least to Croatia.It is an eternal contradiction that this lofty space should be peopled with dozens of perspiring journalists hunched over their laptops, hammering away at their keyboards like birds beating their wings against the bars of a particularly gilded cage. Or maybe such dark thoughts in a such a light-filled structure — designed by the architect Eugenio Miozzi in 1938 to embody the monumentalist fantasy of Mussolini’s fascist regime — are a symptom of a festival lineup that, this year, features a profusion of stories about women similarly chafing against the restrictive, but often luxurious, enclosures built by controlling men.Some of these men were towering real-life figures. Penélope Cruz turns in the standout performance in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” as the long-suffering wife of the Italian motoring magnate (Adam Driver), and Carey Mulligan does much the same as Leonard Bernstein’s wife Felicia in “Maestro,” directed by and starring Bradley Cooper. In both these cases — and arguably to the detriment of both well-made but strangely evanescent films — the portrayal of genius pales in comparison to the portrait of a woman who supported and nurtured that genius, even when it threatened to engulf her. in “Ferrari,” Penélope Cruz plays Laura Ferrari, the wife of the Italian car mogul Enzo Ferrari.Lorenzo SistiOf two memorable scenes in “Maestro,” only one — Bernstein’s performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973 — is about his music. The other is a lacerating domestic argument in the couple’s bedroom, during which, in every shaking nerve, Mulligan embodies the resentment of a bright, ambitious woman whose devotion to and indulgence of her famous spouse has cost her so much of herself.The life-draining capacity of egocentric men is even more strikingly literalized in Pablo Larraín’s mordant, monochrome “El Conde,” in which the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) is recreated as a 250-year-old vampire. In Larraín’s scabrous, grisly alternate history, Pinochet is a decrepit immortal, drowning in self-pity since faking his death to evade justice. And Pinochet’s wife Lucía (Gloria Münchmeyer) is imagined as his equal, or even his better, in sheer perversity; much of the misery the terrorized nation experienced under the dictator is suggested to have been at her behest.But although that gives Lucía, who constantly petitions her husband to bite her so that she too can live out her depravities forever, a degree of apparent agency, that is robbed from her in one brief scene where “The Count,” as he likes to be called, casually trades her off to his obsequious Renfield-style butler (Alfredo Castro). The Count is then free to pursue an affair with a nun, including fantasy play that involves her dressing up as Marie Antoinette. (The Count has been obsessed with the ill-fated Queen of France ever since, in one of the film’s most provocatively gruesome early scenes, he licked the guillotine blade that severed her slender neck.)Marie Antoinette is perhaps the ultimate emblem of decorative married womanhood. And of course, she was the title star of a previous film from Sofia Coppola, whose Venice-competing “Priscilla” is yet another tale of a woman’s tentatively self-engineered escape from the influence of a dominant man.Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny as Elvis and Priscilla Presley in “Priscilla.”Philippe Le SourdBased on, and clearly in deep sympathy with, Priscilla Presley’s memoir “Elvis and Me,” the film follows the famous couple’s relationship, from their first meeting when then-Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) was just 14 years old and living on a U.S. Army base in Germany, to the moment, almost a decade-and-a-half later, when Priscilla Presley drove through the gates of Graceland for the last time as the house’s mistress.This is unmistakably a Sofia Coppola movie, in its luxuriant feel for fabrics and facades, but as in “Marie Antoinette,” here the surfaces become the substance. It is a story about how, especially to a naïve teenager, the trappings of an outwardly tantalizing lifestyle can be sprung upon you like a trap.During their first tearful goodbye in Germany, Elvis (Jacob Elordi) makes the schoolgirl Priscilla promise to “stay exactly the way you are.” But the banner film investigating the icky desire on the part of some men to keep their womenfolk infantilized is Yorgos Lanthimos’ joyously macabre “Poor Things.” The biggest hit of Venice so far, it is deeply — if twistedly, and often hilariously — concerned with the idea of female emancipation, as Bella, played by a riveting, inventive and highly physical Emma Stone, shucks off the psychological bondage first of her adoptive father (Willem Dafoe) and then of her caddish, pompous lover (Mark Ruffalo).Even the film’s hyperreal aesthetic, in which Lisbon and London are depicted by intricate, steampunky set-builds with lurid computer generated skies and seas, reinforce the concept: The film’s self-consciously airless and artificial universe makes the vigor of Bella’s adventures in sex and self-discovery all the more striking.In “Poor Things,” Emma Stone plays Bella, a woman trying to unburden herself from both her adoptive father and her vain lover.Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight PicturesThere are still more women trapped under the thumbs of domineering men dotted throughout the lineup, most notably in two black comedies that both feature contract killers (another feature of Venice 2023, if you also take David Fincher’s “The Killer,” Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft” and the Liam Neeson thriller “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” into further account).Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” stars and is co-written by Glen Powell, who deserves to leap up to major-league stardom on the back of this effervescently amoral exaggeration of a real-life story: Gary, a diffident English professor who moonlights as a fake hit man, finds love getting in the way of his mission when an abused wife, Madison (Adria Arjona), tries to enlist his services. She is driven to it as a means to escape. But the murder-solicitation in Woody Allen’s French-language “Coup de Chance,” is far less morally defensible, prompted by jealousy and again, a loss of control, as the possessive rich-guy Jean (Melvil Poupaud), discovers that his young, vivacious wife (Lou De Laâge) has taken a lover.“Coup de Chance” is, in some respects a return to form for Allen, even if one suspects that some of its breeziness is down to the attractive cast compensating for the staleness of Allen’s recent English-language quippery by mercifully speaking in French. (Native French speakers of my acquaintance tell me that the dialogue, to their ears, sounds similarly unnatural.)But it does feel more current than most of Allen’s recent output, not least in how it syncs up neatly with this Venice edition’s chief preoccupations: hit men and trapped women, and all the poor things who find themselves in plush Central Park or central Paris apartments, in press room palaces or fantastical Lisbon hotels, surrounded by luxury, but longing to be free. 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

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      Venice Film Festival Finds Drama Without Zendaya

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      Day 1 brought challenges but not “Challengers,” the film that had been scheduled to open this usually starry event until it was delayed by the strikes.The sky in Venice wept on Wednesday, for there were no pictures to be taken of Zendaya in couture clambering from a speedboat.No? Too much? Well, it’s hard not to sound melodramatic at a film festival where the movies are big but the mood swings are even bigger. Let me clear my throat, take a swig of this Aperol spritz, and start again …The 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival kicked off on this rainy Wednesday with several big-name auteurs in attendance but few of the stars that this event has come to count on. With dual strikes by the writers and actors guilds forcing a Hollywood shutdown, and the actors forbidden from promoting studio films during the labor action, Venice will inaugurate a fall film season that is still in significant flux.The first day was meant to be turbocharged by the presence of Zendaya, who turned heads here two years ago in a series of stunning dresses while publicizing the first installment of “Dune.” But the shutdown cost Venice the new film she stars in, Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” in which she plays a tennis pro who has to make a romantic choice between two best friends, played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist (the cheeky marketing materials tease that on at least one night, she chooses both).Without its lead available to support the film, MGM delayed the release of “Challengers” to spring 2024 and yanked it from the Venice lineup. Taking its place as the festival’s opening-night film was “Comandante,” a World War II film told from the point of view of Italian submariners. While it’s well-shot and full of suspenseful battle sequences, “Comandante” features exactly zero tennis hotties contemplating a threesome, which may hinder its ultimate appeal with a Venice audience that was promised starry romantic high jinks.Though the festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, admitted at a news conference on Wednesday that the likes of Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) and Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”) will not be attending Venice because of the strike, other actors who hail from more independent productions have managed to secure guild waivers, including “Ferrari” star Adam Driver, “Memory” lead Jessica Chastain, and the cast of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.” They’re expected to show up on the Lido this week alongside a posse of high-powered directors that includes David Fincher (“The Killer”), Ava DuVernay (“Origin”) and Richard Linklater (“Hit Man”).Still, the strikes loom large. At Barbera’s news conference, the jury president, the filmmaker Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”), dressed for maximum solidarity, donning a “Writers Guild on Strike!” shirt and a similar button on the lapel of his sport coat. He noted that as of Wednesday, the writers had been on strike for 121 days, with the actors joining them for the last 48 days, and he called on studios to compensate those artists fairly.“I think there’s a basic idea that each work of art has value unto itself, that it’s not just a piece of content, to use Hollywood’s favorite word right now,” Chazelle told reporters, adding that that idea “has been eroded quite a bit over the past 10 years. There’s many issues on the table with the strikes, but to me, that’s the core issue.”Chazelle was joined by the directors Martin McDonagh and Laura Poitras, who both wore shirts supporting the Writers Guild. They are part of a jury that includes the filmmakers Jane Campion and Mia Hansen-Love, among others.“I’m not sure I entirely deserve this spot, but I will do my best to live up to it,” Chazelle said. “I thank Mr. Barbera for his foolishness in letting me try it out.”Though Chazelle has been to Venice a few times before, to debut “La La Land” and his follow-up, “First Man,” he said he still found the place quite surreal. “That fact that you take a boat to a screening, it’s silly,” Chazelle said. “Cinema, to me, is a waking dream and that, to me, is Venice.”See what I said about melodrama? When you’re in Venice, where even the paint peels in the most picturesque way, you just can’t help yourself from indulging. That’s how your columnist felt last night in the rain, mulling over two of the worst disasters to hit Italy in quite some time: St. Mark’s Square was flooded, and there was no Zendaya. But at least the sun will come out tomorrow here, as will the new films by Michael Mann and Wes Anderson. More