HIVE MINDS

"Bugonia."

- BY JUSTIN CHANG

Emma Stone stars as a high-powered C.E.O. in Yorgos Lanthimos's film.

The first picture Emma Stone made with the director Yorgos Lanthimos was "The Favourite" (2018), a splendidly wicked royal romp, with a curiously prophetic title. Stone and Lanthimos have since worked together several times, and their collaboration, a mutual-favoritism society, has been hailed and sometimes reviled for its darkly exuberant sense of risk. In "Bleat" (2022), a deviation from Lanthimos norms-it was short, blackand-white, and dialogue-free-Stone played a lusty widow who miraculously fucked her dead husband back to life. More transgressive acts of sex and resuscitation awaited in "Poor Things" (2023), in which Stone incarnated the brain of a child, the body of a woman, and the skills of a mad surgeon. The world was her playpen, her boudoir, and her operating theatre.

Even for those of us who cherish Stone's earlier films-say, the way she both embodied and skewered girl-nextdoor innocence in the campus comedy "Easy A" (2010) it's been thrilling to see her embrace darkness with such wild abandon, while also maintaining meticulous control. Following the romantic musical "La La Land" (2016), the apotheosis of her sunny phase, Stone's evolution has been nothing if not purposeful; in addition to picking boundary-pushing roles, she has emerged as a significant industry player, celebrated for her work as a producer. (Projects she has backed include the films "A Real Pain" and "I