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