Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Distributed by: Searchlight Pictures
Written by Taylor Baker
60/100
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone reteam in another period piece wherein Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is feminized and used as a looking glass to interrogate society and corporeality. “Poor Things” sees Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) under the custodianship of Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who she lovingly refers to as God. Bella some time ago threw herself from a bridge to commit suicide, and Godwin happening by the area was able to drag her from the water back to his surgery–Godwin is a renowned surgeon–quickly enough to bring her to life. Bella when we first meet her is akin to a baby or toddler learning how to control her limbs clumsily and easily amused by physical pain and bodily humor.
What ensues is a Lolita-esque riff where Bella takes off with Mark Ruffalo’s Duncan, on a trip around Europe. Along that journey, Bella discovers her sexuality, philosophy, and empathy. The film is often visually decadent, punctuated with stylized horizons and vivid set design. Lanthimos reprises his use of the fish eye lens here wonderfully, able to conjure the feeling for audience members that what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it must be with the same excitement and splendor that Bella has as she experiences the outside world for the first time. Unfortunately, this journey of Bella’s self-discovery loses its pointedness and devolves rather menially into a wave of events that serve as plot devices to blandly deliver theme and motif.
In the effort of building out a believable world just askew of ours, Yorgos loses grip on the character study he’d started and ultimately settles for vibrant mediocrity, in an eye-catching and largely engrossing world. “Poor Things” is as gorgeous as George Miller’s 2022 film “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” and just as magical and mindful in its landscapes. It is likewise contrasted cleverly against Dafoe’s tortured figure as Godwin, but its statements on the body end up fading into nothingness. Lanthimos’s swing at a post-existential film is little more than a lite Von Trier, repurposing an old text for a character piece but failing to arrive or mature to anything meaningful within its redundant final act. “Poor Things” is well-visualized cotton candy, not something I’d ever thought I’d say about the man who made “Alps” and “Dogtooth,” but here we are.
“Poor Things” Trailer
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I agree. Visual effects, colour, setting, were beautiful, but I didn’t buy into Emma’s character development. Too much was skipped. How could she adeptly and logically argue certain points but fall flat in obvious behaviour. I think I am struggling with believing her development when there are too many inconsistencies; progress and regress. I know it’s a fantasy, but I just couldn’t buy into that aspect. Children’s minds don’t develop that way, skipping certain steps. Obviously done due to lack of time and building his story.
Beautiful in many ways; just not her character development.