Poor Things: Set's design behind the incredible movie

In the world of cinema, to create a real odyssey, unique spaces and scenarios are needed. For Poor Things —The film by director Yorgos Lanthimos who has razed with nominations follows a figure similar to Frankenstein while discovering the world in all his wonders and miseries – production designers James Price and Shona Heath collaborated to create some of the most imaginative sets seen on screen this year.

After a lifetime trapped in his family home, the central character of the film, Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone), travels around the world in an attempt to discover it and discover herself. The dream representations of each place – from London to Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris – evoke both the mood of the changing baxter and the surrealist tone of the film itself. With so much land to cover, Price, Heath and their teams began to work on the creation of environments, mixing all the ideas until they found the right mix for each step of the Baxter trip.

Libson's decoration was especially ambitious, with a backdrop 170 feet long and 60 feet high painted by hand. Once the structures were mounted, the cobbled streets were painted with a pattern of «road of yellow bricks» everywhere.

Courtesy Searchlight Pictures

«One of our guidelines was to illuminate the sets with practical light. Yorgos did not want lights to immobilize or hinder the fluidity with which he and photography director Robbie Ryan were going to roll,» Heath explains to AD.

Courtesy Searchlight Pictures