Poor Things Review: Sexual Socialist Frankenstein?
Alice Burton dissects the fish-eyed world of Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest creation.
Thunder Ashes (II) by Edvard Munch - photo via the Thiel Gallery
Poor Things is the surrealist, coming-of-age, 11-time Oscar nominated fantasy film by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. It is also very, very funny. Reactions to the have been polarised, some seeing it as a hilarious feminist romp and others as pretentious male-gazey Oscar bait – in reality, it’s neither. The film is set both in the past and the future, in this world and a different one. Skies are painted in impossible technicolour and trees are red, yet its locations are familiar (London, Lisbon, Alexandria, Paris) just not as we know them. Poor Things has one foot in our reality and the other in some fantastical, slightly magical one.
The story centres around Bella Baxter (Emma Stone). We first meet her in the black-and-white Victorian-esque mansion of her creator, Dr Godwin ‘God’ Baxter (Willem Dafoe). She is his experiment: a child’s brain transplanted into the body of an adult woman. In the film’s opening minutes she is practically non-verbal, prone to gleeful violence and pissing on the floor while constantly observed by an overearnest researcher (Ramy Youssef). What ensues is, in part, her discovery of the joyful, ridiculous state of being alive. She flits between states of awe and confusion, unabashedly gluttonous in enjoying life’s many pleasures; she gets her fill of dancing, masturbation, philosophy, pastel de nata and socialism.
Champions of Poor Things hail the film as refreshingly feminist. There is some truth here. Bella never once experiences anything close to shame as her trans-national sexual awakening sees her sleep with whoever takes her fancy. She is (almost) never the butt of the joke and, importantly, never really suffers as a result of her own sexual voracity. Instead, Lanthimos pokes fun at the slew of boring and controlling men who obsess over her (a particularly pathetic Mark Ruffalo is quite literally brought to his knees). He is careful not to criticise Bella, but rather those who try to possess or corrupt her.
“while Bella’s sexual awakening has been perhaps the most discussed element of the film…it was not what I left the cinema thinking about.”
But the film has also received criticism for its ‘gratuitous’ sex and nudity. It might be worth noting that Poor Things is based on a book by a man (Alasdair Gray), adapted into a screenplay by a man (Tony McNamara) and directed by a man. Of course, men can and should tell stories featuring sexually liberated women, and there is certainly a place for seeing a woman explore her sexuality without shame on film, regardless of who is behind the camera. That being said, this quasi-Victorian woman who has never stepped foot in the outside world has inexplicably shaven legs and armpits which, aside from not making much sense, does also dampen the uninhibited, liberated feminist interpretation of the film just a tad. Along with the lengthy, slightly careless treatment of Bella’s experience working in a Parisian brothel that is almost entirely played for laughs, complaints arose that Poor Things is simply yet another manifestation of the dreaded male gaze.
In Gray’s original text, the Scottish writer places emphasis on the promotion of reproductive rights, with Bella eventually becoming a doctor who focuses on providing contraceptives and reproductive care to working-class women. She engages meaningfully with socialism, dedicates her life to helping the less fortunate, becomes a suffragette and lives a modest life on the margins. However, the book is not the film and Lanthimos chooses to tell a different story. And, as an entirely different beast, Poor Things is wonderful. It is a critique of the ‘polite society’ which Bella repeatedly eschews, though we question why she refuses to fit in. Is it because she is an audacious feminist icon? Or, perhaps, it is because she is determined not to be like other rich people.
Her first real moment of anguish comes when her sheltered innocence is shattered upon discovering the existence of poverty – it ruins her day. The tragedy of the suffering of the poor becomes her tragedy as she seeks consolation, sobbing in her puff-sleeve-gown. Her sanitised attempt to help reeks of her childish naivety as she gives someone else’s money away, half-heartedly assured that it will reach its intended destination. Her passion for philanthropy is never mentioned again – her guilt is apparently absolved.
Bella’s journey as a female protagonist is indeed relatively pain-free, but the same cannot be said for the women around her. The faceless lower-classes who work in the various mansions and mega-yachts she moves through are often abused and disrespected, yet Bella seems to express no awareness or recognition of the role she plays in that abuse. The often dangerous or exploitative reality of sex work is hinted at, but the sex workers work purely out of necessity and are barely adressed.
Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff from the 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein - photo via Universal Pictures.
“Our final image is absurd, dark and sneering.”
As a story of female empowerment, of course Poor Things falls short. But while Bella’s sexual awakening has been perhaps the most discussed element of the film, taking up a good portion of the not inconsiderable 141-minute runtime, it was not what I left the cinema thinking about. I found it difficult to see the heroism in a character whose journey of self-discovery and education culminates in her essentially living the same life as Dr Baxter, no less cruel, no more evolved. There is nothing radical about an individual woman pulling herself up to the same morally reprehensible standards of the men who came before her. As a criticism of this fickle, though perhaps well-intentioned, brand of left-wing sensibility, Poor Things is far more powerful. Just as with Dr Baxter, the abused has become the abuser, not considering how others may be affected by their personal goals. Despite her professed socialism, Bella claws her way up to the glass ceiling and then kicks down the ladder she climbed.
In the film’s final minutes we see she has developed into yet another borderline-psychopathic doctor. Her capacity for empathy appears to be selective. She sips gin in her sunlit garden with her liberated French-prostitute girlfriend and a doting, slightly dim Youssef. She is now in command of a half-conscious live-in servant (Dr Baxter’s less successful project) who fulfils her every whim. Bella is revealed to have become the master of her own vindictive human experiments, just as bizarre as the one that created her. I was reminded of the final scenes of Ari Aster’s Midsommar, with Florence Pugh grinning at her paralysed gaslighting boyfriend burning alive in a bear suit, as we wonder what may be considered ‘reasonable force’ in response to disrespecting your girlfriend. Our final image is absurd, dark and sneering. Bella’s earlier blithe pursuits of socialism and liberating the poor seem to have dissipated, as she enjoys the benefits of the labour of the disempowered from her al-fresco chaise longue.
Poor Things is clever, considered and delightfully insane but what may have been missed in discussions of the film is how it is also a very funny, very beautiful, cautionary tale.