by Robert Bouffard, Editor
Before 2018’s The Favourite, director Yorgos Lanthimos had developed a reputation of making dry, dark comedies. Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer each have their own sense of humor, and can be highly enjoyable if you connect with them. They also explore a dark side of humanity from a nihilistic point of view. But The Favourite, while it keeps some of the nihilism, plays more like a screwball comedy. And now, in Lanthimos’ most recent offering, Poor Things, he takes a step beyond his nihilism and uses those elements to tell an ultimately life-affirming tale of embracing the difficulties of the world to live a life of freedom and exploration.
In a setup similar to Frankenstein, Poor Things has Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe, covered in heavy prosthetics to mimic facial scars and deformations) resurrect Victoria (Emma Stone, with a fitting name for a character in the bizarro Victorian setting), a pregnant woman who threw herself from a bridge with the last remaining vestiges of life. Except he doesn’t simply resurrect her — he removes the child and swaps in its brain for Victoria’s, thus creating Bella, who we follow for the rest of the movie.
Bella basically begins as a toddler in an adult’s body — she breaks dishes, relieves herself in the hallway, and has poor manners towards both Godwin (who she calls “God” — read into that if you want) and strangers. In perhaps too obvious a choice, as God keeps her in his home for observation, the image is black and white. Lanthimos carries over his smattering use of fish-eye lenses from The Favourite, though, and it lends to the film’s off-kilter feel. But once Mark Ruffalo’s snobbish, silly Duncan comes into Bella’s life, promising one of freedom and exploration, Bella goes with him to Lisbon, where the images are in bright, pastel colors, and the set design recalls the dollhouse look of Barbie. We’re seeing the world through Bella’s eyes, and it’s full of wonder and possibility.
Once in Lisbon, Bella and Duncan have, like, a lot of sex, which is the main driving metaphor for discovering the pleasures and opportunities that life has to offer. They’re not the highly uncomfortable sex scenes of Dogtooth, or steamy ones meant to titillate — instead, they’re wacky and quick-cutting, in keeping with Lanthimos’ cinematic voice. As the audience we kind of get bored with these scenes, and Bella does too. She was only really interested in Duncan because he indulged her in a way that God wouldn’t. Once he’s no longer of use to her, and becomes way too possessive of her, Bella decides to explore on her own terms.
And from this, we get a genuine zest for life. Poor Things celebrates curiosity, as Bella is amazed by all the things she sees — nature, buildings, people, food. She even gets to dance, showing that her physical liberation isn’t limited to a sexual nature. But at the same time, the film embraces that life can be crushingly cruel, as the duo encounters gambling, poverty, brothels, where Bella becomes employed, and befriends other people on the margins of society who don’t look down on her. And most impactfully, the find people living, and more affectingly, dying, in squalor, a potential Bella hadn’t even previously considered, let alone comprehended.
In these scenes, we’re treated to what used to be quintessentially Lanthimos: the bleak worldview which presupposes people are garbage. However, in what is perhaps an evolution, if not a maturation, Poor Things moves past that perspective. It posits that people are naturally empathetic, no matter their appearance or makeup, and that it’s the world, its trappings, and our experiences within it that make us jaded, cynical and selfish. Duncan may be a garbage person, but the perfect unfettered, silly despicability that Ruffalo infuses him with was only manifested because it’s possible to get drunk, womanize, and gamble. Bella sees this, and doesn’t need to choose to be sensitive and compassionate (in an attempted gesture that goes horribly wrong, she tries to give Duncan’s gambling winnings to the poor people she comes across), she just is. And her interactions with various costars — Ruffalo; Dafoe; Kathryn Hunter’s brothel runner who takes in Bella; Ramy Youssef’s Max, who partners with God and eventually becomes ill-advisedly engaged to Bella; Christopher Abbott’s Alfie Blessington, whose late-coming yet ultimately crucial role I won’t spoil here; Jerrod Carmichael and Hanna Schygulla’s couple who Bella meets and encourages her curiosity, unlike Duncan; and Suzy Bemba, a fellow prostitute-turned-confidant for Bella, who sticks around longer than initially expected — only serve to show us just how special Bella is because of the way she carries herself and displays her zeal for life and learning.
Stone plays Bella with a naive yet endearing humanity. God created her because, as a eunuch, he could never have kids of his own. And because of his own father doing emotionless experiments on him when he was a child, he’s never quite felt a connection like the one he has to Bella. Those layers create an interesting Dynamic, even when Bella is separated from God for a large chunk of the movie. I would say it’s Stone’s best performance, though with her transcendence on The Curse these days, I don’t know if I can pick between the two. But as Bella, she perfectly combines her silliness and sensitivity. Additionally, and not only in the dance and sex scenes, her physicality and facial acting aren’t like anything we’ve seen from her before — she completely commits and sells the character from the very beginning. Even in the brief glimpses we get of her as Victoria, her demeanor is completely different, which heightens the charm of Bella even more.
Poor Things, bastioned by its score which, like the visual palette, feels as if it comes from Bella herself, is a zany and absurd yet whimsical look at the world and all that it can be if we put aside our prejudices. It’s a celebration of life through the lens of the brokenness which we all share, whether we were experimented on or not.
Rating: High Side of Liked It
Poor Things is currently playing in theaters
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