Poor Creatures!, the latest film by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe, arrives in Italian cinemas on 25 January, after having scooped up awards: to inaugurate the series, the Golden Lion in Venice and to close it - for now - the Golden Globes on 7 January, where she snatched the awards for best comedy of the year and best leading actress in a comedy from the blockbuster Barbie. The race towards the Oscars of this film, which after 2018's The Favourite brings together the trio made up of Lanthimos, screenwriter Tony McNamara and the "muse" Stone, continues with the 13 nominations for the Critics choice awards, awarded on January 14 by film and TV critics. In a press conference with members of this association, the director explained: "I read the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray (just republished in Italy by Safa Editore) while working on La Favorita. I was captivated by the character of Bella Baxter, a woman brought back to life by an extravagant surgeon, with an identity to rebuild and a world to discover. It's a very visual text. The author was also an artist and in the edition I read there were illustrations of him. I flipped through the pages and saw the movie in my head. I immediately met Gray and optioned the novel." The ball is in the hands of screenwriter McNamara, who is nominated for an Emmy for the series The Great, an Oscar nominee for The Favourite and who also worked with Stone on Disney's 2021 film Cruella. "The novel is told from the perspective of the surgeon who gives life back to Bella. We wanted to change the point of view. Emma had to be the protagonist," says Lanthimos.
"Yorgos invited me to dinner after La Favorita and started asking me vague questions, like, 'What are your plans now?' Without knowing anything, I exclaimed: 'Whatever you have on your mind, I'm available!' I waited two years for him to send me the script and two years to start working. It's been a long journey, but it's been worth it." Bella is a character worth a career. He goes through his era with the amazement of someone who sees and experiences the world for the first time, from an animalistic childhood phase to the awareness of his own strength: "I had no reference to build it, it is really made from scratch - continues Stone - It is a new creature, never seen before. That is why men want to shape it, they want it to embody their desires. In her sheer naivety, she rebels against all their expectations and demands, various archetypes of toxic masculinity. Bella is a radically free woman."
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