Now we’re talking. Oh yes please. Watched in a gorgeous, sumptuous 35mm print at the Watershed, the perfect way to see this.
It’s always a very tight line when you have a film so decidedly stylised and affected. It can either be brilliant or god awful. I had faith in Lanthimos and McNamara, and this faith paid off. Riotously funny, in every line of dialogue.
The cast shine - I am baffled that people didn’t take to Mark Ruffalo in this, he’s such a game actor. But obviously Emma Stone is the stand out attraction here, and my god she throws herself into this. Those eyes! So precisely used!
The feminism reading I think is maybe overstated in comparison to the neurodivergence reading, or at least it’s interesting to consider the two in conjunction. There is obviously a lot of explicit stuff in the former, both literally and metaphorically, looking at the liberation angle vis a vis prostitution and its autonomy. But the notion of slowly grappling your way towards understanding that the world doesn’t see itself the way you do is, mm.
It’s just an all round good jolly! It can be all the above and also just a good time.