Poor Things (2023) | Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos | Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Written by: Belle McIntyre
References abound in the weird universes created by Yorgos Lanthimos. Based on a novel by Alasdair Gray, which is clearly referencing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with a gender-bender twist. We enter the bizarre home/laboratory of Doctor Godwin Baxter, aka ‘God’, (Willem Dafoe), inhabited by strange hybrid creatures who wander around as pets. For example, a pug dog with the hind end of a chicken, and a pig/goose composite, which are creations by the good doctor, whose face has fractures and fissures as if it has been composed of random spare parts. But ‘Gods’ pride and joy is Bella Baxter who was created when he found the body of a beautiful young pregnant suicide victim. He was able to remove the living baby and bring the body of the mother back to life using the brain of the baby.
Photo by Atsushi Nishijima | Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
The outlandish tale of Bella Baxter takes place in a Steampunk version of Victorian London. Bella dresses in an eccentric Victorian style with huge balloon sleeves and neck ruffs. When we first meet Bella she is mentally still in the toddler stage, walking stiffly and unsteadily, making babyish utterances, eating and spitting out food, urinating while standing, and exhibiting typical baby explorations. Bella’s brain is maturing at an alarming rate and she needs constant surveillance. Godfrey hires an assistant Max (Ramy Youssef) to monitor her activities and record her progress.
Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos | Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Bella’s most accelerated maturity is sexual as she discovers the pleasure of her own body with creative masturbation techniques which she avidly indulges in. When Max falls in love with her Godfrey enlists the services of a lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) to draw up a marriage contract. But Duncan is something of a cad who fancies himself a ladies’ man, and he is fascinated by the strange Bella. He spirits her away from Godwin and Max and takes her to Europe and Egypt. While Bella is finally introduced to sex or ‘furious jumping’ as she calls it and becomes voracious even by Duncan’s standards, she is also discovering literature, philosophy and languages. She becomes bored and annoyed with Duncan’s possessiveness and escapes his clutches, ending up in a brothel where she is happy, housed and fed. She discovers her own agency and the power that is in her. (If it sounds like Barbie, maybe the anti-Barbie.)
Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos | Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Meanwhile, all of the men who wish to control her life are searching for her while Bella is having many adventures and causing a mixture of fascination and curiosity wherever she goes. The elaborate over the top costume and production design are expressively filmed by cinematographer Robbie Ryan who creates scenes of extraordinary weird beauty. Emma Stone never overplays her hand or slips out of character and creates an indelible character. The dark satire is so elevated by the flights of fancy perpetrated by Lanthimos that it feels light as a confection.
Photo by Atsushi Nishijima | Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
