“I seek outings and adventures,” says Bella Baxter, a long-limbed Frankenstein creation with ink-black eyebrows and matching thigh-length hair, describing herself as an “experimenting person”.
The same could be said for Emma Stone, who on Sunday won a Golden Globe for playing the bizarre protagonist in Poor Things, the latest film by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. Now widely tipped for an Oscar, she also helped to produce the film, which was adapted from the 1992 novel by the late Scottish author Alasdair Gray.
Bella is a cadaver revived by scientist Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who implants the brain of her unborn baby into her skull. Pre-verbal, she urinates on the floor and moves like a marionette, until her mind matures, along with her appetites. Abandoning the monochrome claustrophobia of Victorian London for brilliant adventures in Europe, she gorges on custard tarts, dancing and champagne in what the film’s writer, Tony McNamara, has described as the “dystopian version of a Merchant Ivory . . . grand tour”.