Poor Things: the journey that Bella Baxter, the protagonist of Yorgos Lanthimos’s excellent film, goes through is clearly unique. The director embraces the weirdness of it and enhances the uneasiness with his aesthetic choices: director of photography Robbie Ryan mixes stock, uses both black-and-white and colour, and very creative and evocative lensing (with liberal use of fisheye lenses); composer Jerskin Fendrix creates a musical score filled with dissonant sounds. It helps that the cinematographer is capturing the superb work of production designers Shona Heath and James Price (who create a world that is borderline oneiric, with just a hint of the nightmarish) and costume designer Holly Waddington (whose costumes are just another facet of the protagonist’s evolution).

The film is anchored by a trio of excellent (and very different performances). Emma Stone, as the protagonist, portrays a woman from a complete lack of control over her body and mind to someone at peace with who they are. Her journey is the film, and every step of the way can be perceived through the changes in her physicality and speech patterns. Willem Dafoe plays her father figure, a mad genius (disfigured by very effective prosthetic make-up) with an obscenely objective mind, in a very touching performance. Mark Ruffalo is hillarious as the arrogant suitor that she eventually breaks down. Ramy Youssef is fine as a sympathetic helper to the mad doctor.