Title: Poor Things
Release Date: December 8, 2023
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Production Company: Film4 | TSG Entertainment | Element Pictures | Fruit Tree | Limp
Summary/Review:
I was hesitant to watch this movie as I’ve found Yorgos Lanthimos style too unsettling in the past, and indeed the body horror in this movie is pretty disturbing. On the other hand, I like Emma Stone and heard that her performance is excellent in this film. Indeed it is, as Stone creates her character Bella Baxter with an unearthly physical and vocal form that’s nonetheless endowed with her humanity. I also wasn’t prepared with just how much sex there is in this movie – so much awkward, weird, and unsexy sex.
Bella, we learn, was a pregnant woman in Victorian London who drowned herself in the river. Her body is recovered by Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a surgeon unencumbered by ethics, who revives the body with the brain from the fetus (ironically, Godwin for all his flaws may be the most likable man in this movie full of monstrous men). Godwin takes on an assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) who falls for Bella and they are betrothed. But before they can get married the libertine lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) takes Bella on a global journey.
That journey starts with a lot of sex, but as Bella grows in her intellect and sees more of the world she begins to consider herself an explorer, taking an interest in philosophy, socialism, and women’s equality. In a way it’s kind of a surreal take on a moralistic 19th century novel. The aesthetic of the film is a fantasy/Steampunk take on Europe with some beautiful sets (especially the one for Lisbon). The humor is good too, with a lot of memorable one liners. I don’t know if it all comes together, though, if the movie is supposed to have an underlying meaning, it’s kind of a mess. But it if the point is just a surreal and unsettling fantasy, then I guess it succeeds.
Rating:
Panorama of the Mountains 