00:00Good evening.
00:01Her brain and her body are not quite synchronized.
00:05But she's progressing at an accelerated pace.
00:09Poor Things from filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos
00:11appears to be the big early favorite
00:13at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.
00:16The project is a whimsical, adult-themed gothic fable
00:18that stars Emma Stone
00:19in a potentially career-defining performance.
00:22The film brought the house down
00:23at its first two press screenings
00:25ahead of its world premiere in Italy Friday night,
00:27with several moments of dark comedy becoming huge applause lines.
00:30Poor Things marks the first film from Lanthimos
00:32since The Favourite, which also starred Stone.
00:35The Favourite premiered to raves
00:36at the 2019 Venice Film Festival
00:38and went on to receive Oscar nominations
00:40for Best Picture and Best Director.
00:42Judging by the early reception in Venice,
00:44Poor Things looks certain to launch Lanthimos and Stone
00:47back into the middle of this year's award season conversation.
00:50I am Bella Baxter,
00:52and there is a world to enjoy, circumnavigate.
00:55It is the goal of all to progress.
00:57An adaptation of the novel of the same name,
01:00Poor Things follows Stone's character Bella Baxter,
01:02a young Victorian woman
01:03who has been crudely brought back to life
01:05by a mad scientist, played by Willem Dafoe.
01:08Regaining her footing in the world,
01:09she runs off with a lawyer, played by Mark Ruffalo,
01:12on a surrealistic odyssey of self-discovery and liberation.
01:15While stars Stone, Ruffalo, and Dafoe
01:17were unable to attend the festival
01:19due to the SAG-after strike,
01:21Lanthimos spoke about working with Stone
01:22on the studio title during the film's press conference.
01:25So while we were making The Favourite with Emma,
01:28I already had it in mind,
01:31and I think we had started already working on the script
01:34with Tony McNamara,
01:36and I mentioned it to her
01:37as soon as we finished The Favourite,
01:39and she was extremely excited about the notion
01:42of playing this character,
01:45and she wanted to be involved as much as possible.
01:47So from then on, I kept her in the loop
01:50in, you know, on all the drafts
01:53and all the ideas about designing the world
01:57and all the people that we were going to be working together
02:00and other actors,
02:02and I think that actually helped her a lot
02:06with even her performance as well
02:10because she kept this idea in her mind for a long time.
02:14For much more from the Venice Film Festival,
02:16go to THR.com.
02:17This is The Hollywood Reporter News.
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