Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos — Screenplay by Tony McNamara.

Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthims’ English-language films have all had a clear and obvious imprint of his on them. We have seen this in the absurdist genre-benders The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer — both remembered for the characters’ deadpan delivery and Lanthimos’ distinctive style, with the former being a comedy and the latter being something akin to a psychological thriller — but also in the much more accessible period chamber-piece and Oscar-triumph The Favourite. It would’ve been understandable for admirers of his to worry that by becoming more of a ‘name’ in Hollywood that might lead him to abandon his recurring themes or distinctive absurdist style to curry favor in Tinseltown. If you have been concerned about that then rest assured knowing that it is not the case. Rather, his latest feature-length effort Poor Things shows that the European auteur has steered back in the other direction by having his most ambitious English-language feature yet be just as potentially prickly, boundary-testing, strange, and borderline inaccessible for sheer brazenness as his first two English language features. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things is ambitious, humorous, naughty, and off-kilter in the way art films are sometimes perceived to be by the average moviegoing audience, and, from my perspective, it also happens to be Lanthimos’ best work to date. Poor Things will shock certain audiences, but, make no mistake, Lanthimos’ absurdist and bold female coming-of-age film is one of the very best films of the year. Poor Things gives Greta Gerwig’s Barbie a run for its money when it comes to crowning 2023’s best film about the female experience and male attitudes to female bodily autonomy, agency, and liberation.

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