Coming up next is a strange little piece from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos—who’s no neophyte to oddball comedies as The Lobster shows, though this one seems to be have been catching more attention. What we have is ostensibly a riff on the classic Frankenstein story that also delves into discovery of sexuality and…well, yeah, it being off-kilter is certainly not in question, but how does it actually turn out?
Lanthimos sets things in a stylized alternate version of the late 19th century, all steampunk and hyperreal—I’ll say this off the bat, the visual side of the film is definitely memorable and nicely done, for the most part. Despite some inexplicable fisheye effects near the start, things pick up when we end up moving from an airship-studded London to a version of Lisbon that looks like it was entirely designed by Gaudí, with every other set being a very intricate Art Noveau extravaganza. At least on that mise-en-scene level, Yorgos definitely hits it well for me.
The rest of the film is a little more mixed. We start off with Willem Dafoe caked in makeup like he’s in Wild At Heart again, playing a Victor Frankenstein-a-like doctor with a pseudo-Scottish accent that veers around—it does feel like Dafoe has been taking every bizarre role offered to him, with near a couple dozen roles in the last few years alone, though I’m not complaining. Anyhoo, turns out he’s successfully reanimated a young woman he names Bella (Emma Stone), who grows over the film from someone with the mind of a child to a more proactive, if very blunt and socially indifferent person ostensibly out to discover herself and the world.
In between all this is a young doctor played by Ramy Youssef genuinely in love with her, and Mark Ruffalo putting on one hammy performance as a lawyer far more interested in her body than anything. Now, between all this we have no shortage of squeamishness-inducing scenes of both surgical matters and perhaps less attractive intercourse—and interspersed with that in turn are moments that veer around from ‘genuinely amusing’ to ‘just plain baffling’. There is certainly an effort at uncovering sexuality, female sexuality in particular...albeit coming from someone who may have read a book or two about it once.
And while we do get some amusing side-characters and appealing vistas, things do bog down once we get to the film’s section in Paris, where the smuttier side becomes more drawn out than anything. The performers are certainly trying, but around here is where the script just starts to ramble. This is before we get one final chapter sort of tacked on to make a metaphor of standing up to patriarchy even blunter, and to resolve a plot thread that could’ve worked just fine untied.
There’s certainly some level of talent here, but I can’t say it all ties together—it’s certainly a mixed bag, and not for everyone, though I can see how the surreal and off-kilter feel to it can work for some. Perhaps there’s some way Bella’s story can work for some people—I’m just not getting the sense that Yorgos could quite reach it there.
So take that for what it is—while there’s something to be said for over-the-top sexual steampunk strangeness as a concept and to an extent how it’s done here, I didn’t quite feel it as much as some others seem to have. At the same time, what ability Lanthimos definitely has, I can certainly see here.
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