Overview
When the Venice International Film Festival anoints the winner of its annual competition each year, movie lovers everywhere get a new entry on their must-see lists. It's the same with Cannes and Berlin as well — and in 2023, the Italian festival gave its Golden Lion to Poor Things.
Can't wait to see Emma Stone with Greek Weird Wave director Yorgos Lanthimos after 2018's excellent The Favourite in this spin on Frankenstein? If you're in Brisbane, you can catch it soon thanks to the Brisbane International Film Festival. Fresh from announcing its first six titles for its upcoming fest, BIFF has now revealed that Poor Things is on the lineup as well.
Mark Thursday, October 26–Sunday, November 5 in your diary, because that's when you'll be hitting up various Reading, Dendy and Five Star cinemas around Brisbane for this year's BIFF fix. Mark Wednesday, September 20 on your calendar as well, because that's when the rest of the bill will drop, too.
As not one but two trailers so far have made plain, Poor Things looks like another unique movie from the director of The Lobster and the star of Cruella, after Stone earned an Oscar nomination (deservedly so) for Lanthimos' The Favourite. This time, the pair has traded regal dramas for a riff on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein — which will never stop being a gothic-horror masterpiece, or inspiring stories across the page, stage and screen.
While Poor Things doesn't actually use that f-word, it looks mesmerising, eerie and stunning in its sneak peeks. Also, Stone is clearly playing a version of Frankenstein's monster.
Poor Things adapts Alasdair Grey's 1992 award-winning novel, but the parallels with Shelley's mother-of-all horror greats are as obvious as a bolt of lightning. The focus: Bella Baxter, a woman resurrected by an unorthodox scientist, distinctive in her mannerisms afterwards and eager to learn about a world that isn't quite sure how to react.
Continuing the movie's top-notch casting — and Lanthimos' in general, as seen in everything from Dogtooth and Alps to The Killing of a Sacred Deer as well — Poor Things features Willem Dafoe (The Northman) as the tinkering Dr Godwin Baxter; Mark Ruffalo (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law) as Duncan Wedderburn, a slick lawyer that Bella runs off with; and also Ramy's Ramy Youssef, plus On the Count of Three co-stars Jerrod Carmichael and Christopher Abbott.
Also on BIFF's 2023 lineup: this year's Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, a drama about an author (Sandra Hüller, Toni Erdmann) accused of her husband's murder from French director Justine Triet (Sibyl) — and opening-night pick Uproar, with the New Zealand feature coming to Brisbane fresh from premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Or, film fans can see Hirokazu Kore-eda's Monster, the prolific helmer's latest on a lengthy resume that also includes Shoplifters and Broker; body-horror film Tiger Stripes, which is set in the Malaysian jungle and won the 2023 Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prize; the talk show-set horror Late Night with the Devil ; and The Ending Goes Forever: The Screamfeeder Story, focusing on of Brisbane's 90s indie-music favourites.
Check out the full trailer for Poor Things below:
The 2023 Brisbane International Film Festival runs between Thursday, October 26–Sunday, November 5 at selected Dendy, Reading and Five Star cinemas around Brisbane. For further information, or to buy tickets, head to the festival website — and check back here on Wednesday, September 20 for the full program.
Images: Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.