Poor Things (R21)
141 minutes
Limited screenings from Jan 20 at The Projector
4 stars
The black comedy, adapted from Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, is being released at The Projector as part of Freaks & Greeks: A Yorgos Lanthimos Showcase.
In the laboratory of eminent scientist Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a new assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) meets Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a naive young woman who appears to be mentally and physically disabled.
As the weeks pass, McCandles comes to understand the mysterious origins of the strange child-woman with appetites that scandalise the household.
Bella finds herself boxed in by horrible men. But in this fantastical tale, Greek film-maker Yorgos Lanthimos infuses its steampunk-influenced science-fiction premise with shades of body horror and absurdity.
Created as a blank slate, Bella is an innocent, unburdened by shame, and becomes an explorer in realms that most women will not, or cannot, venture to.
A transformation like Bella’s is tricky. Too often, the result is character incoherence. Bella’s identity by the end is far removed from who she was at the beginning, but through her assured performance, Stone manages to hold these versions within the same person.
The Teachers’ Lounge (PG13)
98 minutes
Now showing at The Projector
4 stars
German director Ilker Catak’s tense and provocative moral drama is set in a German middle school, where an idealistic teacher’s investigations into a spate of petty campus thefts have spiralling consequences.
Young new hire Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) advocates fairness. She is protective of the accused pupil (Can Rodenbostel), a son of Turkish immigrants, and appalled by her fellow teachers pressuring the pre-teen kids to snitch on one another.
The exceptional performance by Benesch shows Nowak’s certitude being stripped away – the movie is confined entirely within the institution, where she is pursued down the hallways by an urgent handheld camera and a soundtrack of screeching violins while paranoia compresses around her.
Germany’s 2024 Academy Awards submission for best international feature deals with the fragility of social order and how quickly a system can unravel from a minor incident.
The End We Start From (NC16)
102 minutes
Now showing
3 stars
This British eco-disaster drama dispenses with genre conventions for an intimate, almost introspective, solitary survival journey of the woman referred to simply as Mother (Jodie Comer).
She goes into labour alone in her East London townhouse just as the city is submerged by massive floods.
At first, she evacuates with her husband (Joel Fry) to her in-laws’ (Mark Strong and Nina Sosanya) country house up north. But food is soon depleted, and the couple become separated in the nationwide chaos.
It is a slim story. The 2017 dystopian novella of the same title by British author Megan Hunter ran a mere 160 pages, and the adaptation, the feature directing debut of Mahalia Belo, rests wholly on Comer’s resolute and sensitive portrayal of motherhood in a narrative that is troubling for its everyday recognisability. Did England not begin 2024 with extreme flooding?
