Little White Lies Issue 101: December/January 2024

Directed by YORGOS LANTHIMOS Starring EMMA STONE, WILLEM DAFOE, MARK RUFFALO Released 12 JANUARY Tower Bridge. The chime of a bell. We see the back of a black-haired woman’s head against a leaden sky, her hair tightly tucked in a bun. Then, her cobalt blue gown flaps in the wind as she flings herself off the bridge. In the opening of Yorgos Lanthimos’ sensational eighth feature, Poor Things, one woman falls into the film’s rich, icy colour scheme, while another one emerges in black and white. That curious person is then seen drumming a few piano keys with her long hair getting in the way. She has little in common with the elegant (but suicidal) lady from before; yet they are one and the same. Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is learning to walk…

Yorgos Lanthimos’ canonisation as an exciting new voice in modern cinema was almost instantaneous when, back in 2009, his ingenious and provocative third feature, Dogtooth, premiered to slack-jaws at the Cannes Film Festival. With films such as 2011’s Alps and 2015’s The Lobster, Lanthimos offered esoteric but increasingly popular variations on his interest in the more arcane and paradoxical aspects of human psychology. Surprisingly, for a filmmaker who in no way panders to mainstream convention, he became a household name in 2018 with the scabrous period comedy, The Favourite, on which he developed an important creative partnership with actress Emma Stone. Since shooting his latest film, Poor Things, in 2021, the pair have made two more films together (an experimental short titled Bleat and a forthcoming anthology titled And), but…

When Emily Stone was 16 years old, pursuing her dream of becoming an actress (after convincing her parents to move to Los Angeles via a compelling PowerPoint presentation) led her to learn that there was already an actress with her moniker registered with the Screen Actor’s Guild. In compliance with their rules, she would have to choose a new stage name. “To ask a 16-year-old to pick a new name is really an interesting process because I was like, ‘I’m going to be Riley. My name is going to be Riley Stone’,” she told W Magazine in 2017. “My name was Riley Stone for about six months and I did a guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle and one day they were like, ‘Riley, Riley!’ and I had no…

THE CREATIVE TEAM RR ROBBIE RYAN Acclaimed cinematographer who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite. As well as Poor Things, they have collaborated on Lanthimos’ next two films. JP & SH JAMES PRICE AND SHONA HEATH Poor Things’ production designers, who worked with Lanthimos – and each other – for the first time on this film. NS NADIA STACEY Poor Things’ hair, make-up and prosthetics designer and a frequent collaborator of both Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone. JF JERSKIN FENDRIX Counts Poor Things as his first film credit. The English musician whose album ‘Winterreise’ caught the attention of Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos. HW HOLLY WADDINGTON Costume designer known for her work on period dramas and counts Poor Things as her first…

Following the barnstorming success of their collaboration on The Favourite, the Australian screenwriter Tony McNamara reteams with Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone to drag Alasdair Gray’s genre-bending 1992 novel to the big screen. And here’s how he did it. LWLies: Is it hard to read a book without a little inkling in your mind that it could be a movie or a series? McNamara: I think it’s a real test of a book. I’m reading one at the moment, I’m about 300 pages in and I haven’t even thought about it as a show or a movie. Because I just think it’s a great book. I read ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders, and when I picked it up, I wondered if there was scope for adaptation, then literally…

Performative excess, grotesque or stilted physicalities and stringent visual means are all common ingredients within a significant new chapter in Greek cinema. Its advent can be traced back to two cornerstone films made in the wake of political unrest and economic woes: Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2009 film Dogtooth and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s 2010 film Attenberg. Both were independently made and highly influential – they are the first entries into the so-called “weird wave”, a glib and indistinct moniker that’s been bandied about persistently in conversations about contemporary Greek cinema. But is it merely a vestment serving a classificatory impulse, privileging generic similarities over culturally determined imaginaries? Or is there a pattern to the weirdness of contemporary Greek cinema? More and more filmmakers are picking up this strange new baton, and while…