Lanthimos will never be content playing second fiddle in the deliberately provocative filmmaker game to Von Trier or Haneke. He's determined to be seen as actually clinically insane, and puts up a very convincing case. Naturally this is also lapped up by many as proof of his genius.
If you are prepared to be bombarded with scene after scene targeting every 'bourgeois' sensibility and regard for naturalism, Lanthimos gives you that in spades, even more here than before. Willem Dafoe (still on his deranged setting from The Lighthouse) plays a Frankenstein-type Victorian doctor who reanimates the corpse of a suicide using the brain of the foetus that she was carrying. The resulting woman named Bella, at first with the mind of an infant, soon discovers the delights of masturbation and the wider world outside the confines of the doctor's house, learning to talk in barrages of ornate synonyms, as she also learns about the cruelty of mankind and men in particular. As has always been obvious in the case of the director himself, she remains thoroughly autistic and this detracts quite severely from any sociopolitical point regarding the exploitation of women that one might want to read into her situation. The lavish sets, a fantastical steampunk melange of Art Nouveau, Baroque, modernist and Gothic, do make the film a visual feast, and the pitch-black humour at many instances also adds to the heady brew. But watching Emma Stone as Bella get shagged interminably by the paying male population of Paris hardly makes a feminist statement of note, even if her absolute commitment to the role shines through so clearly that her Best Actress Oscar was justly deserved.
Consider the entirety as what Terry Giliam or Wes Anderson would turn out if they had no self-control at all. Fascinating, but equally alienating.
6/10
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