Poor Things is a film best experienced without too much prior knowledge. That may sound contradictory considering that I’m expecting you to read my review, but to the film’s credit, there’s not much I could say to prepare you for the absurdity of Poor Things — and I mean absurdity in the best possible way.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest feature is based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name. The film follows Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman with the mind of a toddler inhabiting the body of an adult, who is under the care of Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Bella is a product of Dr. Baxter’s experiments, and the plot of the movie starts to unravel when she begins to explore her desires and assert her agency beyond the restraints placed on her. It is a clear play on typical themes found in Frankenstein that Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara successfully explore in an unconventional coming-of-age package.
At first glance, the film’s unique aesthetic immediately stands out. In recent years, the movie industry’s use of visual effects and computer-generated imagery has monotonized the look of some films, making them seem like a cop-out producers use to avoid the expense and creative effort of more traditional techniques. In Poor Things, however, the use of this technology is anything but dull or superfluous, as it is clearly intentional in creating the film’s zany and otherworldly atmosphere. The novel is set in the 1880s, but in the film, the setting is more akin to a Victorian futuristic steampunk era, an effect conveyed well by this inventive use of visual effects.
The movie’s calculated aesthetic sets the foundation for its actual content: a simultaneously shocking and contemplative rumination on medicine, agency, and womanhood, but complete with comedic elements. This balance is helped by the eccentricity of the tone and setting. A film of this subject matter has the possibility to take itself too seriously and condescend its audience, but Poor Things manages to avoid this trap.
The sheer amount of sexual content in the film could certainly catch a viewer off-guard. Baxter is frequently topless and participates in sexual acts — which are sometimes quite sordid — even more often. Considering that Poor Things is both written and directed by men, I feared the sex scenes might be gratuitous. But on closer review, I concluded that they were not unwarranted. As a film following a woman’s coming-of-age, it never shies away from acknowledging the often inescapable role of sex in a person’s journey to maturity. The film seeks to show that Baxter’s discovery of the world evolves from focusing on sex to seeking experiences beyond her own pleasure — she begins to think about self-improvement, philosophy, and what she can do to make the world better while simultaneously grappling with the role of age and questions of consent.
This topic of sex leads into the film’s fascinating exploration of Baxter’s relationships with men. I don’t think there is a single male character who is not somehow complicit in something horrible that happens to Baxter or tries to restrain her in some way. Still, some male characters are redeemed and others are not, and the mark of an unredeemable man in Poor Things is an unrelenting obsession with controlling Baxter’s sex life. This is what distinguishes the male characters that see Baxter as a fully formed person from those who do not. There is something beautiful in Baxter’s ability to forgive some harm and conflict on her own terms. Even so, she also gets revenge on those who don’t deserve her compassion.
Towards the film’s end, Dr. Baxter says, “It’s all very interesting, what is happening,” which sums up my experience of watching the movie itself. In an age where everything can be so easily pirated and streamed, Poor Things is the kind of movie that moves viewers to see it in the cinema. Not only do viewers get the full benefit of the cinematography and Lanthimos’ signature fish-eye shots in a theater — they also get the added bonus of watching and experiencing it in a shared space with others.
At my Wednesday matinee showing at Images Cinema, fellow moviegoers and I were treated to expletives and “Oh yeah!”s yelled at the screen in surprise by a man in the front row every time something funny or bizarre happened. It was nice to know that we all felt the same.
Poor Things is playing at Images until Feb. 8.
