Poor Things review – Lanthimos at his most… | Little White Lies

Poor Things review – Lan­thi­mos at his most play­ful and comedic

10 Jan 2024 / Released: 12 Jan 2024

A person with long dark hair wearing a yellow shawl, facing a person wearing a brown jacket in a wooded area.
A person with long dark hair wearing a yellow shawl, facing a person wearing a brown jacket in a wooded area.
5

Anticipation.

We haven’t been as excited for something since the maid arrived with something called a pineapple.

5

Enjoyment.

Emma Stone slaying, Mark Ruffalo simping, Willem Dafoe burping, and countless more joys to experience.

5

In Retrospect.

I now sexually identify as a Bella Baxter.

Emma Stone gives a career-defin­ing per­for­mance in Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ opu­lent provo­ca­tion about the human body as a nexus for plea­sure and pain.

Tow­er Bridge. The chime of a bell. We see the back of a brunette woman’s head against a lead­en sky, her hair tight­ly tucked in a bun. Then, her cobalt blue gown flaps in the wind as she flings her­self off the bridge. In the open­ing of Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ sen­sa­tion­al eighth fea­ture, Poor Things, one woman falls into the film’s rich, icy colour scheme, while anoth­er one emerges in black and white. That curi­ous per­son is then seen drum­ming a few piano keys with her long hair get­ting in the way. She has lit­tle in com­mon with the ele­gant (but sui­ci­dal) lady from before; yet they are one and the same.

Bel­la Bax­ter (Emma Stone) is learn­ing to walk and talk in the body of a twen­ty-some­thing woman while under care­ful super­vi­sion. She is banned from leav­ing her opu­lent premis­es. Dr. God­win Bax­ter, who is fond­ly, sym­bol­i­cal­ly referred to as God” (Willem Dafoe), over­sees her devel­op­ment under the aus­pices of an exper­i­ment” at his home. He enlists a med­ical stu­dent named Max McCan­dles (Ramy Youssef) to keep dai­ly track of her expand­ing word usage and (frankly bizarre) nutri­tion­al intake. As they’re all kept clois­tered in the Bax­ter house (Dog­tooth, any­one?), it doesn’t take long for the agree­able Max to fall for Bel­la, whose unfil­tered baby speak stands at odds with her allur­ing fem­i­nine physique.

In the spir­it of its woman-child pro­tag­o­nist, Lan­thi­mos’ film is a hybrid which bet­ters itself at an accel­er­at­ing pace: between goth­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty and fierce com­e­dy; black-and-white and resplen­dent colour. It amal­ga­mates notions of desire and death dri­ve into a sin­gle, most curi­ous whole.

Poor Things is adapt­ed from Scot­tish writer Alas­dair Gray’s 1992 nov­el of the same name, which presents a Vic­to­ri­an tan­gle of goth­ic motifs and fan­ci­ful med­ical inno­va­tions. The book is fit­ting­ly out­landish, with illus­tra­tions by the author and a visu­al and styl­is­tic map track­ing its female protagonist’s devel­op­ment. Gray and Lan­thi­mos are a per­fect match, and no won­der the book has not been turned into a film before; it’s now found its sec­ond mak­er. The screen­play he entrusts to co-writer Tony McNa­ma­ra (The Favourite) and their col­lab­o­ra­tion does so much to enrich the world of the nov­el in a con­fi­dent retelling that focus­es first and fore­most on Bella.

For his first, more direct nov­el adap­ta­tion – after draw­ing on mythol­o­gy and his­tor­i­cal sources in his pre­vi­ous two films – the Greek direc­tor spares no scin­til­la of con­cep­tu­al and cre­ative flair. In addi­tion to swap­ping Glas­gow for Lon­don as the story’s ini­tial back­drop, the film opens up like a pop-up book depict­ing Bella’s ever-chang­ing world. Although, her explo­ration can only begin when she’s matured enough to fight for her right to live a lit­tle before mar­ry­ing Max. From Lon­don, she sets sail to Lis­bon, then Alexan­dria, and final­ly Paris for a voy­age of moral, intel­lec­tu­al and sex­u­al discovery.

Young woman in a flowing orange skirt dancing in a formal ballroom setting, with other people visible in the background.

In the begin­ning, every­thing is filmed in lus­cious black-and-white, which trans­lates as a visu­al mir­ror of Bella’s non-dis­crim­i­nat­ing, bina­ry gaze; the more she knows, the more colour­ful her world becomes. World-build­ing through colour sounds deceit­ful­ly sim­ple, since the hues and shades warm up scene by scene, but the tran­si­tion from mono­chrome to suc­cu­lent yel­lows and reds must be harsh in order to mark the evo­lu­tion­ary jump.

In this way, a fan­tas­tic atem­po­ral­i­ty gloss­es over the sense of lin­ear time and place, dis­lo­cat­ing the viewer’s expec­ta­tions of peri­od-true archi­tec­ture. Lisbon’s trams, for exam­ple, now dan­gle from the skies. Bella’s world is con­stant­ly expand­ing. From the moment she dis­cov­ers maps to her demands to see the out­side world, the film’s aes­thet­ics mim­ic that sense of an orig­i­nary explo­ration. Rob­bie Ryan’s plas­tic cin­e­matog­ra­phy shows us how life seems to her, with warped fish­eye, rav­en­ous zooms, and all.

Bella’s evo­lu­tion is a won­der to behold thanks to how pli­able Emma Stone’s per­for­mance is. Guid­ed by Birm­ing­ham-born artist Jer­skin Fendrix’s min­i­mal, but rever­ber­at­ing com­po­si­tions of sin­gu­lar string strokes or piano key taps, Bella’s trans­for­ma­tion shows her learn­ing how to nav­i­gate a body and the grow­ing expan­sion of known spaces at the same time.

She con­sumes the world step by awk­ward step, until it becomes tru­ly hers. In a way, the Amer­i­can actress is tasked to cul­ti­vate an iden­ti­ty as it forms, with­out pos­tur­ing and with nat­u­ral­ism made impos­si­ble. Bel­la stum­bles and botch­es the Eng­lish syn­tax at first, but she forms a gen­uine con­nec­tion with a life out­side con­ven­tion. The bet­ter she learns to speak, the more con­trol she exerts. Soon, she begins to nar­rate feel­ings and emo­tion as they occur in a cor­po­re­al diary, which serve to point out the latent con­tra­dic­tions in a large­ly misog­y­nis­tic world. To a woman grow­ing up out­side patri­archy, but in the vicin­i­ty of it, all its trap­pings seem absurd, its log­ic unfounded.

Poor Things digs into the com­e­dy of these con­ven­tions as if it was a gold mine. Because of how it treats the pil­lars of het­ero­nor­ma­tive soci­ety as inher­it­ed from the Vic­to­ri­an era, the film delights in being a far­ci­cal fem­i­nist ren­di­tion of three cru­cial ‑isms of the Enlight­en­ment: ratio­nal­ism, the mind-body dual­ism, and pro­gres­sivism. Bel­la coun­ters them all through the most rad­i­cal means in such a sani­tised intel­lec­tu­al con­text: sex.

Dark clouds in moody sky, deck chairs overlooking vast ocean view

Her auton­o­my is realised through lan­guage and orgasms, and in her case, they go hand in hand. When Bel­la decides to leave the con­fines of Baxter’s home, she knows all too well what to expect from a debauch­er­ous trip with famed seduc­er Dun­can Wed­der­burn (Mark Ruf­fa­lo, who oscil­lates between ruinous to glo­ri­ous­ly sullen). For her, sex is a moral­ly neu­tral act and plea­sure a key for a good life. Jeal­ousy and monogamy are non­sen­si­cal con­cepts she can­not name, and the fan­tas­mat­ic iter­a­tions of what she calls furi­ous jump­ing” (has there ever been a phrase more accu­rate?) she and Dun­can engage in, exem­pli­fy how her fresh per­spec­tive descales het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships out of their per­ni­cious moral­ism. By mak­ing her desires known, heard, and ful­filled, Bel­la slips into a dom­i­nat­ing role quite eas­i­ly because she hasn’t been taught sub­ju­ga­tion – a hope for women of the future, unburdened.

Sub­ver­sive­ly, Bella’s knowl­edge is car­nal, and this is per­haps why the film is so eas­i­ly labelled fem­i­nist. Yet, Lan­thi­mos’ films have rarely seen bod­ies as more than sacks of flesh, a neces­si­ty for struc­tures to per­pet­u­ate their power:be it Dogtooth’s fam­i­ly, The Lob­sters het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty, or The Favourite’s roy­al court. But after Queen Anne, her limp­ing and her gout in the last film, comes the expan­sive Bel­la Bax­ter, her cli­max­ing face tight­ly held in close up again and again through­out Poor Things. Per­haps she’s immune to patri­archy because the same elec­tri­cal cur­rents that were used back then to cure” women of hys­te­ria (aka the med­ical­ly enforced veto on female sex­u­al­i­ty) brought her back to life.

We’ve knelt qui­et­ly at the altar of Yor­gos for five long years wait­ing for new work, and boy, our prayers sure­ly have been answered with a film as mar­vel­lous­ly com­plex as this one. Already a Gold­en Lion win­ner, Poor Things show­cas­es the direc­tor at his most play­ful and comedic, weav­ing his oth­er­wise evi­dent polit­i­cal cri­tique into the com­plex char­ac­ter of Bel­la: a new kind of woman, a tab­u­la rasa. How plea­sur­able it is to wit­ness an evo­lu­tion like Bella’s, with won­der and admiration.

This mirac­u­lous film daubs punk­ish splotch­es of sur­re­al absur­di­ty over the can­vas of the tra­di­tion­al peri­od film. Lan­thi­mos’ dis­trust of pow­er struc­tures here tar­gets the patri­archy, and Stone is the bravest sol­dier, as both pro­duc­er and lead actress. If I know the world, I can improve it,” is Bella’s cre­do, and that is prob­a­bly the most opti­mistic thing a char­ac­ter in a Lan­thi­mos film has ever said, Oh, to be a poor thing must be life’s great­est joy!’

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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