Poor Things

Genre-defying, original, weird, aggressively sexual, head-scratching; I’ve heard all of these and more when discussing Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2023 Academy Award Best Picture-nominated film Poor Things. I had heard all of these descriptors before I had seen even one frame of this picture, which set up some expectations in my mind before I first stepped into a small theater in rural Idaho and sat down to experience something that I would personally describe as unforgettable. Unforgettable doesn’t always equate to being good, though. I have seen one-of-a-kind films that are that way for a good reason; no one in their right mind would make them that way. I have also seen The Lobster, another film by Yorgos that has a strong sense of originality, and, while I have not revisited it, I will never forget it. Yorgos has a vision that, strange as it is, jives with me. I am excited to see what he does with his upcoming remake of the South Korean film: Save the Green Planet. 

Poor Things is a film that explores a subject that is taboo but does so utilizing an actress that is not only well into adulthood but is also very popular in the current cultural climate. Emma Stone is a welcome fixture who has managed to successfully act in pop-cultural bubblegum films as well as indie dramas and has won an Academy Award in the past. By utilizing her in this film, it softens the blow a little bit on the surface because we are seeing a fully grown actress on screen. But when you take a step back and ponder what it is you are actually seeing, all the horror, disgust, and general ickiness of the whole affair comes crashing down, and you realize exactly what it was you just watched. 

The basic story is reminiscent of a Universal Horror film, specifically taking inspiration from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The setting is late-Victorian era London; Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) accepts an offer to work with mad scientist Godwin “God” Baxter (Willem Dafoe) in chronicling the behavior and growth of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a nearly mute woman living with Godwin. Bella is fully grown physically but acts like a toddler; however, even in the short time Max spends with her, he is impressed by how fast she is growing mentally. Eventually, he approaches Godwin and learns that Bella was a pregnant adult woman who threw herself off a bridge into the water below. Godwin retrieved the body, removed the baby’s brain and put it in the body of her mother, then rejuvenated the body. The results are the grown-infant Max has been studying. 

Bella continues to develop, eventually discovering her own sexuality as she explores her own body. She also longs to leave Godwin’s home and explore the world. Max falls in love with her, and the two plan to marry, but that is interrupted when slimy lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) is brought in to draft the legal paperwork for the union. Duncan is enchanted with Bella and convinces her to run off with him to see the world before she ties herself down to Max. The two spend endless hours having sex, but Bella’s immaturity and curiosity, empathy, and innocence eventually leave them penniless and homeless in Paris. Bella figures out a way to make money by selling her body in a brothel, which chases Duncan away. Eventually, she will end up back home with Max and the dying Godwin with one last secret left to be revealed: who she was before all of this happened and why did she commit suicide in the first place?

This film is meant to provoke strong negative emotions. While we are seeing plenty of men having sex with Bella, we are not to forget that she is just a child, albeit one in a grown-up’s body. This is not the same thing as seeing a fully grown woman with a mental disability exploring her sexuality, nor is it an adult actress playing a teenager having sex with another teenager, and we should never forget that fact. To help us keep track of that, Bella is shown, early on, to be dressed like the little child she actually is, complete with diapers. As she develops into a more grown woman emotionally, her clothes mature with her. On top of that, her walking is stilted like a toddler for much of the film, only becoming more like an adult’s walk late in the film. She may look like an adult, but she is hardly at the age of consent. Duncan may not fully realize that, but Max sure does, and though the film tries to paint him as the better man, there is still that bit of me that realizes in his own way he is just as despicable. 

The film is moralizing about the male gaze and the rationalization men make when looking at highly sexualized underaged girls; but the film gets its messaging muddled in the final act. We’re with Bella as she matures to the point of adulthood while grappling with the concept of consent and having sex with the various men of Paris, whether she wants to or not. But when she returns to London upon hearing that Godwin is dying, she once again agrees to marry Max, based primarily on his willingness to forgive her promiscuity. This puts Max in a bad light once again, and he never quite escapes that. That, coupled with him and Godwin creating a new “Bella” in her absence, really makes it hard to be on his side through this. 

On their wedding day, just as it feels this film is beginning to wrap up, a new twist is introduced, and the film goes on another tangent. Bella’s husband (the man her previous self had been married to before jumping off the bridge to her death) shows up. He demands she return with him, which she does. She shows no fear or emotion whatsoever on this endeavor, including when seeing his cruelty or when she overhears him discussing with a doctor forcibly giving her a female circumcision. She has grown throughout the course of the film but never shows it emotionally. This is troublesome throughout, especially during her time in the brother where the film would have been stronger were she emotionally troubled by what she is having to do to make money. By the time she rescues herself from her husband’s hands and does what she does to him, it is done coldly, emotionlessly. She does the same surgery to him that was done to her earlier, yet no one is looking at him afterwards the way the men were looking at her. In some ways, it is moralizing about the way men look at and respond to underage women who are sexually aggressive. In other ways, it doesn’t quite land that point and instead feels muddy.

Poor Things is a visual feast to look at. I’ll give it that. The sets are intricately built to portray an alternate reality and to do so in vivid color, with the exception of the opening scenes before Bella leaves Godwin’s home. Those earlier scenes are in black-and-white. Rear projection LED screens were heavily utilized, too, to give us the breathtaking visuals while Bella and Duncan are onboard a passenger ship headed to Paris. It’s beautiful and terrible at the same time. Coupled with that is the delightfully off-kilter score by Jerskin Fendrix that gives us, from the first moment to the last, a sense that all is not quite normal. This score was nominated for the Oscar and works in the context of the film. It is a bit too much, though, when divorced from the movie itself.

This is a film that is designed to make you uncomfortable. There are copious amounts of nudity involved, and while the actress performing it is old enough, she is portraying a very young child most of the time, making it cringy to feel anything remotely sexual while watching it. So many reviewers of the film missed or deliberately turned a blind eye to that point when they examined this film when it was released. It’s hard to understand how that could be, but perhaps the idea of glamorizing what amounts to statutory rape was just too much for most people to accept, and they chose instead to willfully ignore the subtext. The film spells it out, but it went over their heads anyway. Watching it today, for the first time since cinemas, I understood this perfectly clearly, and it bothered me a lot. That is exactly what Yorgos set out to do. For that, I can commend it as a film and as a concept. I just can’t see myself wanting to watch it a third time. 

Academy Award Nominations:

 

Best Picture: Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Emma Stone

Best Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Best Actress: Emma Stone (won)

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo

Best Adapted Screenplay: Tony McNamara

Best Original Score: Jerskin Fendrix

Best Production Design: James Price, Shona Heath, and Zsuzsa Mihalek (won)

Best Cinematography: Robbie Ryan

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier, and Josh Weston (won)

Best Costume Design: Holly Waddington (won)

Best Film Editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis

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Release Date: December 8, 2023

Running Time: 142 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jerrod Carmichael

Directed By: Yorgos Lanthimos