Last week, Poor Things came to streaming on Hulu and I took the opportunity to catch up the multi-Oscar nominated film that has captivated critics and audiences for months now.
Let's start off with basic: what is Poor Things about?
Well...
That's an excellent question.
Let me try this: Jane Austen gets high, reads Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau and decides to write a novel about a heroine who is built by a mad scientist and decides to elevate her intelligence and wisdom while working as a whore in a Parisian brothel.
OK, we're close but not quite.
Poor Things, a 2023 film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, is a mixture horror, comedy, romance, steampunk sci-fi, sex, violence and intrigue.
In Victorian London, medical student Max McCandles becomes an assistant to eccentric surgeon Godwin Baxter. Max is tasked with the responsibility of tracking the actions and development of Godwin's latest scientific creation, Bella Baxter.
Bella is hyper, uncontrolled, her movements are erratic and jerky, as if she barely has any motor skills. And her verbal skills are limited to blurted our words and noises. Bella calls her creator "God".
Godwin explains to Max that Bella was created from a pregnant woman who had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. Godwin fished her out of the river and replaced the woman's brain with that of her unborn fetus! Voila! Bella Baxter is born.
That feels kind of wrong, doesn't it? Well, it made perfect sense to Godwin.
A moment about Godwin Baxter. His appearance suggests that of a sewn together Frankenstein's monster, his face criss-crossed with deep stitches, his chin crudely attached to his face. As a child, Godwin was the subject of his father's frequently cruel and callous experimentation.
Bella's intelligence begins to develop more rapidly and she becomes more curious about the world outside.
Bella also discovers masturbation and is more than willing to talk about that to anyone who will listen. She suggests cucumbers are rather effective.
Duncan Wedderburn, a lawyer working for Godwin, enters the picture. Duncan is a lawyer of some questionable skills and an unchecked hedonism who convinces Bella to run away with him to explore the world.
Bella agrees.
This will not end well.
For Duncan. He winds up a penniless,hysterical, vindictive shell of a man.
Bella's ravenous curiosity about the world is unrestricted by the normal constraints of society. Bella's decision to enter into a Parisian brothel to seek employment is logically arrived at:
- She gets to have sex which she usually enjoys.
- She can make money at it.
- And since the men seeking their pleasures with prostitutes don't hang around and demand her attention beyond achieving their sexual release, she has more time to read, learn and experience about the world and how it works.
The sex stuff. Yeah, let's go there.
Sex scenes in this movie are extraordinarily graphic. And it's also not titillating. For Bella,it's just her job. The men, most of whom are ugly and unappealing, well... Eww!
Eventually Bella returns to London to find that "God" is dying. Max and Bella agree to marry. He is not put off by her "whoring" in Paris although he is a bit concerned she may have under charged for her services.
"30 francs? That seems.... low..."
But problems ensue when the life of that woman who jumped off the London Bridge interferes with Bella's plans.
This movie is... weird.
But it is riveting. Both in use of sound and visuals, this film has an atmosphere, a sense of a world that is just a few inches or scant seconds to the side of the one we know.
Emma Stone won the Academy Award for Best Actress and it is well deserved. Bella Baxter is a most unique character, like nothing else I have ever seen in any movie. Emma employs her voice, the expression on her face, her eyes, the way she carries her body to illuminate Bella's growth and development. She uses virtually every tool available to an actor to create this wonderfully weird and complex character.
A word about Mark Ruffalo who plays Duncan. If all you know of Mark is his work as the affable Bruce Banner in the Marvel movies, well, watching him twist up his face in hysterical anger while screaming "cunt" is well, just wrong. But Ruffalo makes it work. We know from jump that Duncan cannot be trusted and he will hurt Bella.
Or he can try.
Bella's unique view of the world is no match for Duncan's narrow focus on what he wants.
I don't want to oversell Poor Things. It is not a movie for everyone. I watched this on my own without Andrea. I know her tastes in movies and this is not it.
In fact, I owe her a nice safe funny movie and we'll discuss that in tomorrow's Cinema Sunday.
But going back to Poor Things, if you need a movie to challenge you, disturb, perhaps even offend you a bit, well this movie may well be worth your while.
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