VENICE - With Emma Stone as a sexually voracious reanimated corpse in "Poor Things", the Venice Film Festival was taken on some wild rides on Friday.
"Poor Things", a hilarious and strongly feminist reworking of Frankenstein, was labelled an "instant classic" by critics.
As Bella, a woman brought back to life with an infant's brain by a mad scientist (played Willem Defoe), it features some of the most explicit sex ever seen in an A-list Hollywood film.
Stone was unable to attend the festival due to the ongoing actors strike in Hollywood, but director Yorgos Lanthimos said she fully embraced the role.
"The character has no shame and Emma had to have no shame about her body, nudity, engaging in those scenes. She understood that right away," he told reporters.
But he said an intimacy coordinator proved very useful.
"In the beginning (they) felt a little threatening to most filmmakers but I think it's like everything: if you work with a good person, it's great and you realise you actually need them," Lanthimos said.
The film brilliantly skewers the way men try and fail to control the innocent Bella -- triggering bursts of spontaneous applause and riotous laughter from the audience in Venice.
Lanthimos is known for visually ingenious and pitch-black comedies, but goes even further here with a steampunk vision of 19th century Europe and surreal touches like the duck-goat and pig-dog that roam the scientist's home.
His previous film "The Favourite", also starring Stone, won the Jury Prize in Venice in 2018 and best actress for Olivia Colman, paving the way to her Oscar triumph.
"Poor Things" is an early favourite among 23 movies competing for the top prize, the Golden Lion, to be awarded on September 9.
The Guardian had one of several five-star reviews and said Stone gives "a hilarious, beyond-next-level performance", while Total Film called it a "funny, sad, bawdy, beautiful concoction that will haunt and provoke in equal measure."