Anyone who has followed Yorgos Lanthimos since his early low-budget Greek features can only marvel over the route that has led to the wildly exotic realms of his recent work. He vaults into farther realms of invention and audacity with “Poor Things” (Golden Lion at Venice); a piece of ultra-baroque period futurism that must count as the most lavishly produced work in recent years which can also be classified as a full-blown art film. The film features a dazzling performance by Emma Stone – if anything, outdoing her revelatory turn in “The Favourite”.

Based on the 1992 novel by Alisdair Gray, the film is the story of Bella artificially brought back from the dead with the addition of a new brain and is an outré feminist fable that – despite its mock-Victorian setting – is a film for our times.