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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.
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley
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.
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 When you first talked to Iorgos about it, how did he...
00:03 Oh, that's interesting. How do you describe it?
00:05 I was quite fascinated by this discordancy between these period costumes and this crazy,
00:22 less obviously sci-fi history. The process with Iorgos was one of kind of distilling that.
00:28 He gives you quite a long leash. He doesn't micromanage or tell you what to do,
00:32 and I found that really fascinating. And I had a whole massive journey of my own,
00:37 strange body forms in bold, lurid colours.
00:40 Holly came in with so many boards and so many ideas that were just brilliant. I flew to Athens
00:45 before our rehearsal process to do a long early fitting with Holly and Iorgos.
00:50 We very quickly decided that she may have been dressed in the morning by Mrs. Prim,
00:54 but has lost most of it by lunchtime.
00:57 We had a very good starting point with Bella because she's so unique. You can imagine that
01:02 she would put together her looks in a strange way.
01:06 So they're always worn with a pair of knickers or with a pair of bloomers or with little play
01:11 suits or a weird bustle. She really had these ideas for textures and intestinal or body parts,
01:19 like there's a vagina blouse, you know, like everything symbolizes something.
01:23 I sort of reserved all really strong yellows for her. We spent ages trying to achieve this
01:27 shade of mango yellow that Iorgos likes so much. It's a colour that is synonymous with sun and
01:33 light and she's a very light-filled person.
01:36 There is a world to enjoy, traverse, circumnavigate.
01:40 This is one of the costumes worn by Catherine Hunter, who played Madame Swiney,
01:45 who's the madame in the brothel. I found this fabric, which I really liked, super textural,
01:52 and the crushed velvet, I associate it as being quite a seedy fabric.
01:57 This is the ocean liner costume that she wears when she goes to the slum. This is the day when
02:04 she's really with Harry, so it's very much about her and Harry being in these pale costumes.
02:09 You hear that?
02:10 So before this point, we haven't really seen her in anything as put together as this,
02:13 and this is the moment when we see her kind of identifying with her class.
02:19 This was not going to be a very traditional period film, so she could work with fabrics
02:25 deconstructing the period look. We got the opportunity to reveal layers of
02:31 garments that we would never normally see in films.
02:34 Iorgos is really drawn to strange material qualities. He likes things that have a hard
02:39 to place texture. I don't think Iorgos would ever say, "We're setting this in the 1890s," but
02:44 he really loved the big sleeves of the 1890s. The silhouette of the period creates this super
02:50 svelte female body by making the shoulders huge.
02:53 I think I'm just nervous because of the fall, because that's so constricting.
02:58 She doesn't wear a corset at all in the film for her performance, particularly when she's
03:02 very young, like a new person, and at her most childlike. The language of her movement just
03:08 could not have coped with a corset. And then it's as if she has this separate wardrobe that's
03:12 almost been waiting for her that's a bit more grown up. I think it doesn't really matter that
03:17 they're from another period, actually. With Holly, the costume designer, it's not
03:21 just about look, it's about practicality. Willem has these boiler suits. We made one
03:27 that was based on the idea of what if a smoking jacket was a very tailored smoking jacket
03:32 boiler suit. I'm actually something of a romantic, Max.
03:36 And everything has these little smiley pockets that look like orifices, and he plugs his
03:41 tubing through this funny little hole. Everybody's costume is gorgeous. I could
03:46 walk down Fifth Avenue with this today. It'd actually look cool.
03:50 Men were very peacockish in the Victorian age. I mean, sumptuous, like wild. We took
03:57 that to the extreme. I mean, I probably had like 15 fittings. Everything was tailor-made.
04:02 We just look at a lot of things and images and pictures and discuss about the characters.
04:11 It gives you the freedom to think outside the box.
04:14 I think Holly really is incredibly brilliant. I think that the ideas that she was coming
04:19 up with were very challenging to execute, and were all deeply thought through and inspired.
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