Video: ‘Poor Things’ | Anatomy of a Scene

“I’m Yorgos Lanthimos, the director of ‘Poor Things.’” “Understand we never lived outside God’s house.” “What?” “So Bella’s so much to discover. And your sad face makes me discover angry feelings for you.” “This is a scene that takes place in a restaurant in Lisbon, where Bella Baxter and Duncan, played by Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo, are having dinner. And there’s other people dancing. During that, the music attracts Bella, and just instinctively, gets up and starts wanting to join the dance. It’s a very funny, awkward, physical situation where Bella has never really danced before, and it’s very intuitive, what she does. He’s not a good dancer. He’s trying to keep up with her. We had a lot of help from Constanza Macras, who did the choreography. So the dance, because she’s done it for the first time, it just felt like it should be something quite primitive, slightly baby-like, but then it quickly develops into something that she wants to take hold of and lose control of her self. And Mark, in real life, is also not a great dancer. And on the other hand, Emma is a really good dancer, so we kind of used that dynamic as we were building the choreography. And it actually became funnier than what we thought.” “What do you keep doing that for?” “A man over there repeated blinks at me. I blink back for polite, I think.” [MUSIC PLAYING]