Poor Things
A coming of age. But make it female, feral and Frankenstein.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things is a gloriously frank, female-led Frankenstein. It’s based on the book by Alasdair Gray—which is based on the classic by Mary Shelley. If, like me, you’re unfamiliar with Gray, a Google search will reveal an author far less virile in appearance than you might expect the writer of such a ‘furious jumping’ (sex) packed story to be. But it’s far, far richer than just ferocious fornication: it’s a foolish good feminist tale.
Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things.
Poor Things tells the story of Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone in a standout performance), a should-be corpse reanimated by her unorthodox surgeon foster father Godwin Baxter, a man with a patchwork face of scars who must ‘produce his own gastric juices’ thanks to his dangerously ambitious surgeon father (played by the perpetually magnificent Willem Dafoe who brings Godwin to life with a mix of detached rationalism and fatherly tenderness).
At its bloody heart, Poor Things is a surreal odyssey—about Bella’s quest for freedom from many different forms of male control, self-discovery and gaining her footing—quite literally. Because, in the beginning, she lurches around like a toddler. And that’s because she kind of is a toddler to start with.
You see, before Bella was Bella she was Victoria Blessington. Victoria Blessington was pregnant. She was also unhappy enough to throw herself from a bridge in a suicide attempt. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) she didn’t quite succeed and her barely-pulsing body was fished out of the river and brought to Godwin. And here’s where things get wonderfully weird. Godwin swaps Victoria’s brain for that of her unborn baby thus, creating Bella—a creature with the body of a grown woman and the brain of an infant. This premise allows for a remarkably inventive story packed with laughs, spectacular sets and art direction, phenomenal performances and a wonderful tension throughout: restrictive male love and control (as Bella poetically states “they love me tight”) and a woman’s fierce quest for liberation.
The film is told in chapters, providing an elegant way to witness Bella’s transformative character arc. As she plots her way through Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris with her temporary lover Duncan Wedderburn “I will marry Max as he seems right for that, but first I will adventure on Duncan Wedderburn, whom I think cares little of damage to me, but will be interesting as well,” —she gains power and strength at every exotic port.
Duncan is played by Mark Ruffalo with gloriously deliberate Victorian pomp and a self-awareness of the fragility of the male ego which made me think of Ryan Gosling’s recent take on Ken. The pure-of-heart (though still a touch possessive) marriage material Max Candles is played with likeable innocence by Ramy Youssef.
But of all the characters, Bella Baxter is the standout. Her rapid growth is exhilarating to watch. And she is perhaps one of the most liberated female characters I’ve seen on screen in years. Her naivety and ‘unlearnedness’ completely frees her of the shackles of shame and fear—and that makes for a hilariously blunt and charming female lead. It also makes for some of the most delightfully chaotic, childlike (and often just plain wrong) action and dialogue that Aussie writer Tony McNamara and Emma Stone must have had unfathamable fun with. Bella reads Emerson, masturbates at the dinner table, shuts down a cynic, licks ears on a whim, feels compelled to punch a loudly crying baby, says things like ‘foolish good’, cannot fathom why people don’t just ‘furious jump’ all day (nor why the male species cannot go again and again like women can), and in an exceptionally funny scene outwits Wedderburn by doing just as she’s told—by confining herself to the following three responses: “How marvellous”. “Delighted”. “And how do they get the pastry so crisp?”. She is fabulous. I love her.
But as Bella grows she sees the rife injustice in the world. She learns what it means to be human. To experience the full gamut of life: pleasure and pain, anger and sorrow, and everything in between. She learns that the thing she’d been so keen to understand— adult life—is nothing more than a cruel theatre show. And she learns that there are two paths to freedom: naivety or the acquisition of knowledge.
And what a world Bella experiences it all in. Lanthimos has created a Dali-esque landscape where everything feels off-kilter. It’s Victorian era meets steampunk meets space age and it’s dreamily stunning from start to end. Chogs (chicken dogs) roam rose-filled gardens. The costumes are avante-garde and ethereal. Everything is exaggerated. Sleeves look like lungs. There are intricate pleats and embroidery and childlike bloomers paired with more adult choices perfectly reflect the mixed maturity state of Bella. (I would have my brain removed and swapped with that of my unborn babies if it meant I could wear Bella’s blue satin embroidered coat—or her Lisbon attire for that matter.) To add to it all, Lanthimos employs portal-like fish-eye lenses, black-and-white footage in the earlier scenes to create a sense of oppression and show how others see Bella. Then switches to slow-zoom, colour-drenched shots as the film progresses to show Bella contemplating the world and coming into her own.
Poor Things is highly crafted and yet it still leaves room for raw magic. As a director, Lanthimos straddles the space between extreme fastidiousness and attention to detail with a refreshing unpredictability. Case in point: The Dance Scene (yes I’m treating it as a proper noun because it’s proper crazy good).
There is no other director that I can think of who could handle this thriller/horror/feminist tale with such aplomb. Lanthimos is an absolute master of weird wave, and his wild imagination and self-aware style of handling absurdism play incredibly well with this offbeat tale. Inventive. Evocative. Rousing. Go see it. You won’t see another film remotely like it this year (or, perhaps, ever).
