Emma Stone is a reanimated corpse with the brain of a baby in Poor Things

polygon.com:

Searchlight Pictures has released a teaser for the new Emma Stone movie Poor Things — and unlike many teasers, this trailer deserves the name, featuring only 30 seconds of footage and one line of dialogue (two, if you count an extremely camp “ow” from Mark Ruffalo).

Nonetheless, there’s a lot to intrigue and mystify in this collection of surreal imagery from the mind of director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite). And it’s not just from Lanthimos’ mind. Poor Things is an adaptation of the 1992 novel by the idiosyncratic Scottish author and illustrator Alasdair Gray, who very much had his own set of preoccupations (including sex, socialism, and typesetting — he not only illustrated all his own books but typeset them by hand).

So, as a fan of both Gray and the book, let me explain what you’re seeing here. In fact, the official logline is not a bad place to start:

From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

This is a decent summary, but it omits some of the juicier and funnier details of Gray’s plot and characterization. Let’s break it down by character — with the caveat that Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara (who co-wrote The Favourite and Stone’s Cruella as well as creating