The grotesque Poor creatures! with Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo, in competition at the Venice Film Festival, presents sex scenes without Hollywood inhibitions. Director Yorgos Lanthimos and the actress thought it couldn’t be done otherwise.
Yorgos Lanthimosas those who saw his previous project with will remember Emma Stone, The favouriteis not a filmmaker who follows mainstream rules: his Poor creatures!passed into competition al Venice Festival a few days ago, it’s a triumph of grotesque visionary, where Emma and the rest of the cast, composed of Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe e Ramy Youssefthey had to deal with the material without hesitation. Particularly with regards to Emma Stone and her sex scenes. Lanthimos explained to Venezia (via People) how they tackled those difficult sequences.
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Poor creatures!: review of the film by Yorgos Lanthimos with Emma Stone in competition in Venice
Emma Stone, a “shameless” character for Poor Creatures!
Poor creatures! is the adaptation of the novel of the same name by Alasdair Grayreleased in 1992. The crazy plot involves Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), died while trying to escape her violent husband, died by drowning, and then be brought back to life from Dr. Godwin Baxter’s experiment (Willem Dafoe). The reborn Bella it is not inhibited by any social limits or judgmentsand escapes together with the dissolute lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). A visionary context, in which Emma Stone also acted as co-producer, relying on Lanthimos, who had already directed her in The favourite. And he was aware of the difficulties on the horizon.
For me it was very important don’t create a puritanical filmbecause he would have at all betrayed the main character. So we had to have courage. (…) The character had no shame, Emma didn’t have to be ashamed of her body, about nudity and engaging in those scenes, and she understood it right away. (…) There is an understanding between us and we can communicate without explaining or talking too much. As soon as I started saying this, Emma was like, “Yes, of course, Bella is like that. (We lit the sets from the outside), so that there were only three people in the room, only the camera operators. Sometimes there weren’t even sound people, we just placed microphones in some places. So it was just Robbie (Ryan, the director of photography), myself, assistant director Hayley (Williams) and the cast. We created a very comfortable and intimate environment. (…) There was a script, but especially for the sex scenes we discussed with Emma and decided: “What position should we do here, what thing should we do there, what is missing? Based on the experience of sex and people’s different desires, what did we need to do to make it one effective representation of human desire and its idiosyncrasies? It was very important that it was part of the film and that we were not ashamed of it.