Poor Things was awful. There, I said it.
The highly anticipated Emma Stone film, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, follows newly resurrected Bella Baxter after she killed herself by throwing herself off a London bridge into the Thames below. Only she was pregnant at the time, allowing a Victorian Dr Frankenstein-esque mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) to switch her brain with her unborn child’s, bringing her back to life.
Which is where many of my issues with the film begin. For the majority – if not all – of the movie, Bella is technically a baby, growing into a toddler. Yet she soon embarks on a wild sexual journey of self-discovery with wayward lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo).
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Emma Stone previously said that sex is just a small part of Bella’s new life, yet so much of the film is dedicated to her “furious jumping” with various people in various positions. But my biggest problem wasn’t with the racy sex scenes – one of which sees Bella pleasure herself with an apple and a cucumber at the breakfast table.
(Image: Searchlight Pictures)
No, my biggest problem was the film’s inherent misogyny. The first 40 minutes or so are filmed entirely in black and white, as Bella rides a tricycle around her house, smashes vases on the floor, and toys with the penis of a cadaver in Dr Godwin Baxter’s morgue.
Its transition into technicolour is sudden, shocking. As soon as Bella runs away to Lisbon with Duncan, the pair are committed to romping with each other in a variety of inventive positions – and the screen blooms into colour.
The implication is that Bella’s life was bland and boring until she had a penis inside of her. It speaks less of a sexual awakening – she’s already experimented with self-pleasure over and over and realised that she can bring herself “happiness” – and more to the idea that a woman isn’t complete without a man (more specifically, a man’s genitals) in her life.
(Image: Searchlight Pictures)
There were some positives to the film – the steampunk, Victorian imagery was beautiful. Mysterious cable cars rise above city skylines, styled as old-fashioned carriages. Ships pump green gas into the air, styled with submarine portholes. Delving right into the uncanny valley, what at first seems like a horse-drawn cart is actually a steam-powered car with a horse’s head attached to the front.
Godwin’s backstory intrigued me more than Bella’s. Throughout the film he recounts brutal experiments his father subjected him to, including trapping his thumbs in vices and turning him into a eunuch. He then turns these experiments to others, forging hybrid chicken-dogs and goat-birds that roam around his London mansion.
The movie felt drawn-out and dragged on. The British accents put on by everyone in the main cast were stilted and kept slipping back into American – barring Stone and Ramy Youssef – which left me curious as to why they didn’t set the film in New York and still have Bella traverse Europe as her grand adventure.
(Image: Searchlight Pictures/Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock)
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The final scenes see Bella almost suffer genital mutilation by her abusive ex-husband – or rather, the husband of the woman she was before her resurrection. She works at a Parisian brothel once money runs out, and eventually returns home to her ‘boring’ betrothed, Max McCandles.
Poor Things doesn’t feel like a progressive tale of a woman’s self-discovery, but an anti-feminist rant focused on how men want to exploit younger women, and it was a chore to get through.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
