MOVIE REVIEW: Poor Things

Images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

POOR THINGS– 4 STARS

LESSON #1: LET’S PLAY “FUCK, MARRY, KILL”– Call this descriptor creative or call it crude. Poor Things is the cinematic equivalent of the forced Q&A game “Fuck, Marry, Kill,” but where the three choices of women are the same one. The reason being is, at different points of this zany Yorgos Lanthimos film, the logic and urges line up to warrant any of the three options. Watching the carnal uprising within Emma Stone’s character as she evolves from someone else’s guinea pig to her own lioness over two hours is both a crazed head-trip and a staggering sight to behold. Now, it’s going to take some examination of unique people and places in Victorian era London to work up this movie’s lather.

The first black-and-white and sluggish third of Poor Things presents our central grown woman having the mental acuity of little more than a toddler. There’s a ghastly reason why Bella Baxter (Stone) acts the bizarre and unrefined ways she does, and it centers on Dr. Godwin Baxter, played by four-time Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe. He is a croaking, deformed, and hermetic surgeon and professor who retrieved Bella after a suicide attempt jumping into the Thames. For several years after conducting a very unorthodox and grotesque procedure to save her life, Dr. Godwin has been literally playing the title of God to lead her mental and physical rehabilitation. 

Facing his own deteriorating mortality, Dr. Godwin recruits one of his brightest students, Max McCandles (up and coming TV star Ramy Youssef), to clinically observe Bella’s progress, take over her education, and possibly become her future spouse. Like Max and Dr. Godwin, we’re watching her figure out the world through her skewed experience and unfiltered reactions. Poor Things swerves when Bella’s curiosities and thrills wander elsewhere. Enter the dandified lawyer Duncan Wedderbeurn (a haughty role for Mark Ruffalo). He does what the infatuated, yet prim-and-proper Max could not or would not do: unlock her sexually and subsequently turn the movie to color cinematography.

LESSON #2: PICK YOUR NEW FAVORITE EUPHEMISM FOR SEX– Allow a quick sidebar for a moment on the topic of sex acts. Duncan and our simpleton heroine call their coital activities “furious jumping.” Uttered by Stone with Lanthimos’ stilted style of dialogue, the line delivery and mental image of the term will release a hearty chuckle every time you hear it. Out of all the hilarious euphemisms out there for amorous congress (including that one), “furious jumping” may just become your new favorite. Who knew Poor Things would give Saltburn a run as the kinkiest movie of the year?

Stealing her hand in marriage out from under Max, Duncan whisks Bella away on a lavish love-bomb European honeymoon for more “furious jumping.” Sex becomes her number one instinctual fix. This new freedom and all the exerted pleasure accelerate Bella’s cognitive skills and emotional capacity by the day. Soon enough, the former witless and demure version of her transforms into a far more independent and forthright soul who seeks the opportunities to keep experiencing her favored compulsion. When the money runs out, Bella drops Duncan to join the roster of a seedy Parisian brothel run by Swiney (Kathryn Hunter from The Tragedy of Macbeth).

LESSON #3: OPERATING WITHOUT SHAME– Early in the movie, Bella is considered an experiment of Dr. Baxter seeking controlled conditions towards pure results. Living vicariously through impulses and without consequences, Bella knows no shame and cannot be tamed. The character retains that brazen pliancy even as she forges her own liberation, and that bold behavior creates the potency of Poor Things. 

You correctly read that prominent Greek name above in the introductory paragraph. Three-time Academy Award nominee and Greek Weird Wave director Yorgos Lanthimos continues to live up the adjectives of that movement’s name. Poor Things reunites Lanthimos with his Oscar-nominated The Favourite writer Tony McNamara to adapt Alasdair Gray’s 1992 verboten novel of the same name. Their work across both movies is most squarely not for everyone (I’m convinced “cunt” is McNamara’s favorite curse word) with the filmmaker’s inexpressive tendencies, exotropic camerawork, and stories populated with rotten cores of pessimism. 

All of Yorgos Lanthimos’s creative hallmarks saturate Poor Things, which is the director’s longest film to date. Thanks to more than double the budget of The Favourite, indulgences are maximized and Poor Things cinematographer Robbie Ryan escalates the outlandish whimsy to new lengths and heights. Extra pizazz in the production design department overseen by Shona Heath (constructing in her first feature) and James Price (Judy and Paddington 2) and Holly Waddington’s (Lady Macbeth) costumes smothers the movie with textures of finery and grime fitting the shifting settings and moods. A little boost of matte effects ignited backgrounds while Lanthimos’ enlisted pub musician Jerskin Fendrix for an unconventional score to be the first proper composer of his career.

Coupled with the aesthetic artistry, Lanthimos gets his actors to dive to another plane of performance and existence, and one cannot help but respect that accepted challenge from all who muster the courage to participate. Molded within a seedy and duplicitous persona, this is the most delirious we’ve seen Mark Ruffalo in years, and it’s a welcome sight. Intangible wisdom and weirdness is just another day at the office for the beloved Willem Dafoe, meaning he’s right at home puppeteering Promethean shadings as the omnipresent warped moral compass of Poor Things. Both are brilliant, but pale before their pale lead actress.

Like her character, Emma Stone is eschewing any and all prudeness for the most audacious lead performance in a film this year. Early in Poor Things when Bella is at her most infantile, there’s an uneasy feeling Stone might have been trapped in a “Simple Jack” or Nell-level role that flagrantly piles on the tropes saddled on the mentally handicapped. The most fascinating and impressive aspect of this film is watching this carnivorous plant of a woman bloom with her own brand of self-taught vigor. Rejoining Lanthimos after The Favourite and leveling herself to be a producer on this film may net the 35-year-old her second Oscar.

LESSON #4: WHAT IS YOUR TOLERANCE FOR DEPRAVITY AND ABSURDITY?— For better or worse, Poor Things is a movie of unsavory urges and scratched itches that pull the viewer down a pernicious drain of unconscionable behavior. There is a dark comedy buried in the muck of Poor Things that curdles to the surface in the final third as our strong female becomes the master of her own fate, body, heart, and business. Stone sells it at every turn. Still, at many points, one will wonder whether all of the absurdity will amount to something exotic or vapid.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1162)