Poor Things and Yorgos Lanthimos: A Film Review Intersecting Various Feminist Debates

Abstract

Poor Things (2023), the ninth film by Greek auteur filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, continues to present the director’s off-kilter vision of humanity, allowing people to view themselves in defamiliarized ways. The works of Lanthimos exude an artistic contemplativeness and often convey an artificial realism where normalcy is presented as both benign and insidious. These cinematic traits are evident in his breakout film, Dogtooth (2009). This austere work deconstructs a bizarre suburban family as an autocratic state, showing how easily children can be manipulated to believe in a worldview, but also how people inevitably rebel. Intersecting with Dogtooth, Lanthimos’s other films, The Lobster (2015) and The Favourite (2018), explore social microcosms in cloistered, controlled environments, satirizing power dynamics within larger social structures.