As a feminist take, Poor Things isn’t bad … but it also isn’t Barbie. The film mostly comes off as a “be careful what you ask for” experience, for it contains a fair amount of sex, some of which isn’t disturbing at all. However, Yorgos Lanthimos is a name synonymous with “disturbing.” So if you’ve ever seen a Yorgos Lanthimos film prior to this one, you can hardly get offended by Poor Things … and you will probably find it tame by comparison.
The film is about a grown woman with the brain of a baby. Luckily, the film instantly recognizes the weakness of the premise and lets baby brain growth accelerate rapidly. By the end of the film, it has likely reached adult-level, so we get to appreciate full brain maturity from infant to adult in 141 minutes of screentime.
And, yes, there’s lots of sex in there. You can determine for yourself how disturbed you’re going to be about that.
Mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a.k.a “God” has a face that seems to have lost a pumpkin-carving contest. Despite appearances, he is the Doctor Frankenstein in this scenario and his subject is not a piecemeal assembly of multiple humans, but one relatively intact woman. Expositionally, we are told that God encountered a pregnant woman’s suicide in the river. There was no brain activity in the adult, but the child in utero still showed signs of life, so, you know, what’s mad doctor to do, anyway? He removes the lady’s brain, sticks the baby’s brain upstairs, and re-animates the corpse. There’s your premise. Ain’t it lovely?
Bella (Emma Stone) is the science experiment. When we meet her, she is not yet toilet trained, but she gets up to rudimentary table manners after spending time with the doctor’s assistant, Max (Ramy Youssef). Not unlike a child, Bella proves willful and selectively belligerent.
And then she discovers masturbation … and the film takes a turn it won’t recover from.
Plucked away by wealthy lothario Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella gets to discover what it is to live in the world outside the doctor’s gilded cage. [Hint: it involves a lot of sex.] The sex is intended for humor, which you may or may not see based on how wrapped up you might get with the idea that Bella has the body of Emma Stone, which we see A LOT of, but the mind of a child. As Bella grows, the serious part of the film emerges in the form of willful feminism and developing morality. How is being the sexual toy of Duncan Wedderburn superior to being a common whore? Is there any shame in being a common whore? How about being betrothed to Max, who refused to touch her, but had no problem with a future marriage agreement. Everyone in the film engages some level of 
disturbing; the question is “What’s the dividing line between acceptable and abhorrent?” How is the madam that employs Bella the sex worker superior to the husband who sees Bella as his property?
I’m slightly put off that Poor Things isn’t necessarily the weirdest or most disturbing film of the year. I have come to expect these things of Yorgos Lanthimos. However, we might just chalk that up to the exceptional performance by Emma Stone. Did I believe she was a woman with the mind of developing child? Most definitely. And, in doing so, she darn near normalizes the absurd plot. So, it isn’t for lack of trying that Yorgos Lanthimos failed to make the weirdest film of the year. I found Poor Things entertaining but a tad one-dimensional. I know we love a good sex romp, but I find sexual politics only half as engaging as the film finds them. The better part of the film seems like an excuse to get a good look at Emma Stone and/or Emma Stone’s body double. Don’t get me wrong, that’s enough to recommend the film as is … but I would hope for deeper revelations before claiming best-of-the-year status.
If (for uniqueness of plot, presentation, and ideas) Poor Things somehow rises to the elite of 2023, I have no problem with that … but I’m not going to help it get there.
There once was a woman named Bella
Whose life was an endless Hella
So she ceased her affairs
And a doc made repairs
And now everything is just swella
Rated R, 141 Minutes
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writer: Tony McNamara, Alasdair Gray
Genre: The one where stuffy patriarchs get offended
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The true believers in Emma Stone
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Are you ok with a baby’s brain in a woman’s body?
