Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023) Review
Always carve with compassion.
When we talk about a Yorgos Lanthimos film, we know that it will probably be full of his usual quirky trademarks such as awkward characters, dark comedy, uncomfortable situations, body licking, and sex scenes. Poor Things is no stranger to these traits, but it’s definitely more accessible compared to his earlier Greek-language works like Alps and Dogtooth. In fact, it’s as if Yorgos has deliberately toned it down to appeal to a more mainstream audience and award committees, even making the plot easier to understand by explaining every detail through exposition and dialogue, getting rid of the common “I didn’t get it” feeling that other of his works might leave the viewer with. However, this doesn’t necessarily translate into an easy watch, at least in terms of explicit content. I wouldn’t recommend watching this film on a first date or with people you don’t really know unless you want to be labeled a potential weirdo.
Poor Things, based on the homonymous book by Alasdair Gray, is the director’s first attempt at a book-to-film adaptation. I haven’t read the source material, but the film definitely made me want to, as I suspect there must be more to it than what is actually shown.
The plot is divided into six acts in which we see the character development of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), whose conception is appealing and reminiscent of Frankentein’s monster. There are several possible outcomes and approaches to her development, as she is essentially a child in a young adult’s body, but it seems that Lanthimos didn’t find it interesting enough to further flesh out the way Bella processes and understands the world around her by posing thought-provoking questions that could provide meaningful insights into life and society. Instead, he thought it would be more appropriate to portray a CHILD in the body of a young adult (Emma Stone, no less) discovering sex. Sure, sexuality is a part of life and a natural subject to explore, but the way Poor Things presents it feels more like a male sex fantasy in the form of a pedophile pornographic movie showing a Hollywood star being explicitly fucked in many different contexts by many different people. This reveals a moral red zone because even though she gives consent to her sexual encounters, she doesn’t understand the role of sex and its implications in society because she is still a CHILD, in case I haven’t emphasized that sufficiently.
As if that weren’t enough, Bella even becomes a prostitute without any apparent psychological side effects, as if it were a fun and liberal profession that one would want to become from a tender age. If someone really intended to make a film about sexual awakening, it’s imperative to talk about the negative aspects of it, such as discomfort (which is briefly touched upon once, without giving it much relevance), menstruation, sexually transmitted diseases, abuse…
Her personal evolution, apart from sex, is rather poor, which shows what the creators cared about after all. The main catalyst for her intellectual development are the characters she meets in the course of the story, who are underdeveloped and one-dimensional. Said development begins rather late, in the Ship act, where she apparently becomes interested in literature (shown in only one scene) because of the two friends she makes there. Their few and underdeveloped interactions apparently have a tremendous impact on her, creating a narrative gap that is not filled, as we are supposed to assume that she reads a lot, to the point of massively and unrealistically improving her diction and articulation to almost Shakespearean levels in a matter of a few days. Not only that, but she goes from struggling to articulate a simple sentence to being bilingual within an hour and a half of the film, which, along with what has already been said, is a sign of rushed and shoddy character design. However, I can understand the reasoning behind her linguistic growth, as it’s more noticeable to the audience and easier to portray than creating complex psychological layers to the character. As a matter of fact, the lack of any hint of evolution in her morals and ethics by the end of the story is clear evidence of how stalled her development is. And no, sympathizing with socialism and using pre-fabricated Marxist concepts to show how concerned she is for the poor while living in the haut société of Paris is not a sign of progress (rather, it is a sign of regression).
Bella is also portrayed as an extremely hedonistic person, overly self-indulgent, self-absorbed, and narcissistic, which inexplicably doesn’t lead her to chaos and destruction. It feels like the story is designed to fulfill all of her whimsical desires at no cost, so that everything unrealistically works out for the best and ends in an extremely good light for her, all things considered.
Given the premise and the way the film unfolds, I can’t help but think of Poor Things as a dark and explicit version of Barbie, as the development of both female protagonists follows a very similar structure: they are both naive and childish young women who encounter a big, dangerous world outside of their idealized, perfect bubble (Barbie Land for Barbie, and Dr. Godwin Baxter’s (Willem Dafoe) house for Bella). They eventually come to terms with the real world and reach a point of empowerment where they realize their place in the world, to put it simply.
Aside from what has already been established about Bella, Emma Stone’s performance deserves its own mention for how astonishing it is. She definitely has the courage to take on such a role. Furthermore, the artistic aspect of the film won’t leave you indifferent, as it is certainly fascinating and unconventional. The artsy steampunk setting with fancy costumes, the maximalist scenarios, the compelling soundtrack, and the Burton-esque elements, such as the creatures shown in Godwin Baxter’s house, make the movie feel all the more surreal and eccentric, which fits the overall plot. Special kudos go to the Lisbon set, whose design is mesmerizingly beautiful and colorful.
If we look at Poor Things through the prism of black comedy and overlook the questionable pedophile aspect of it without expecting a compelling character development (I would recommend The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser for that), it’s definitely a funny experience. It made me smile most of the time and made me laugh a lot because of the ridiculous situations and the way Bella interprets the world around her.
I’ve taken five milligrams of heroin through the toes for pain, amphetamines for energy, and cocaine because I am partial to cocaine.
The way the acts, and by extension the plot, developed was similar to how you start writing your name big and clear in a text box and then write it smaller and smaller as you realize you are running out of space. The epitome of this feeling came with the final act, London II, which felt rushed and added for the sake of being faithful to the original work (I guess, since I haven’t read it), as it doesn’t add anything particularly relevant to the overall story (especially when Alfie Blessington (Christopher Abbott) comes into the mix). The same goes for some disposable characters, such as Felicity (Margaret Qualley).
While Poor Things is definitely an amusing black comedy with an interesting premise, a nice art direction, and a stellar Emma Stone, it doesn’t really offer much else. I left the cinema thinking that there were many layers to be uncovered behind all the comedy, but when I sat down to write about it, I realized that it wasn’t really as substantial as I initially thought. It squanders the potential to channel these aspects into a thorough intellectual development of a character who discovers freedom and the plasticity of adulthood along with the best and worst aspects of humanity, while wrapping itself in the already funny black comedy elements present. Besides, if you are trying to find an empowering feminist message or a meaningful portrayal of sexual awakening in a film based on a book written by a man and directed by a man, with pornographic content with a pedophile background and a woman who volunteers to work in a brothel under the premise that it will be a super liberating experience, you might want to look elsewhere.
Some details about the storySome details about the story
There will be spoilers in the following section.
There is biblical symbolism in the film that challenges traditional religious morality. For example, right after Bella discovers masturbation, she tries to put an apple in her vagina. The symbolism of the apple in the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve is widely seen as temptation and sin. In this case, Bella doesn’t offer it to anyone else and accepts to “bite” it, which leads to her insatiable desire for freedom and promiscuity.
She abbreviates “Godwin” to “God”, which makes sense since he is Bella’s creator. As such, he decides what’s good for her from his morally superior position. However, there is a turning point where he decides that the only way for her to progress, for better or worse, is to grant her the freedom she longs for, which he took away from her when he created her. However, I can’t wrap my head around why he thought it would be a good idea to let her go with a stranger like Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) instead of her fiancé the cuckold Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef).
Both male characters are interesting because they represent two forms of masculinity and ways of loving. On the one hand, Duncan is a cynical, passionate lover, the kind of man who would pluck a flower he likes rather than nurture the plant to produce more beautiful flowers. On the other hand, Max is portrayed as a righteous, patient lover who would rather fertilize and water the plant every day. Their outcomes are also quite different, as Duncan ends up almost crazy and Max is the one who seems to get the best piece of the pie, which he shares with Toinette (Suzy Bemba). By the way, where the hell does she come from? She’s not shown in the whole London II act and seems to be forgotten at this point (like most characters), but suddenly appears at the end in God’s house with Max and Bella.
As for the Ship act, Harry Astley (Jerrod Carmichael) is like a distilled version of Morpheus from Matrix. He is a potentially interesting character, but his short, jarring, shallow, underdeveloped, and bland nihilistic contributions seem more like an excuse to make Bella realize that there is injustice in the world. I got excited when he told Bella that polite society would eventually destroy her, which made me expect her downfall after succumbing to the desires of the powerful or something of that nature. Surprisingly enough, nothing of the sort happened.
When Bella realizes that slavery exist (#shocking) during the Alexandreia act, she briefly laments their suffering and even gives money to the sailors to help the poor. However, it’s more of a comic scene than a genuine sign of her concern for trying to make a better world, as she then forgets about it for the rest of the story.
As I mentioned a few paragraphs above about Alfie Blessington’s arc, the way he’s introduced feels forced, like a device to briefly reference the underdeveloped arc of Bella’s mother. It’s true that it reveals why Bella’s mother committed suicide (another confrontation with religious morality, even more so when we consider that she was pregnant), as well as showing Alfie’s type of love, treating the person he loves as a conquest rather than someone he genuinely cares about, in contrast to Max’s way. Nevertheless, I wish Lanthimos had handled it better so that it didn’t feel so rushed and half-baked, as the way Bella kills him feels like the short way to close the arc and get to the end.
The ending left me a bit cold, as I expected Bella and Max McCandless to use the body of Bella mother’s husband to save the Doctor by transplanting his brain. However, the twist of putting a goat’s brain in him is even more twisted and gives you one last laugh before the film ends, while leaving you with the feeling that the story hasn’t been satisfactorily concluded.