By CYNTHIA BIDDLECOMB
Los Alamos
“Poor Things” is not a film for the squeamish, nor would it be enjoyed by the prudish. (For proof of this, note the description in the MPAA rating at the end of this review.) For anyone else, it is a daring film. One review aptly calls it “an impeccably awkward, satirical adventure into absurdity” (IMDB), which about sums it up.
Poor Things has received the second highest number of nominations for Oscars this season: eleven to Oppenheimer’s thirteen. But again, be warned, it will take a strong stomach to watch this strange movie.
Emma Stone, who won an Oscar for LaLa Land, plays Bella Baxter, a child in the body of a beautiful woman. Willem Dafoe (Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate), wearing a monstrous mask, is Dr. Godwin Baxter, a transplant surgeon—brains, parts of animals, etc. It was he who extracted the baby from a woman found dead in the river, transplanting its brain into its mother; after revivifying the mother’s body, it is he who “raises” the woman/child, whom he names Bella, letting her explore her universe in the safe confines of his unusual home.
Ramy Youssef plays Max, one of Dr. Baxter’s anatomy students given the task of monitoring Bella’s learning process. He notes that she picks up 25 new words every day, among other accomplishments. Still, Bella is naïve and uncouth, not fit for polite society. Along comes the lecherous lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who Dr. Baxter asks to draw up a marriage contract between Max and Bella in a way that would keep her forever in Baxter’s house. Wedderburn is captivated and entices Bella to leave with him to see the world.
The story leads the audience through Bella’s discoveries about life: proper behavior, sexual pleasure, polite conversation, wealth and extreme poverty, philosophy and literature, the need for some women to sell their bodies to survive, and ultimately an understanding of the need of some men to possess and control the women who excite them. Bella rebels against much, yet she throws herself into the joys she finds in life. Eventually she learns why the woman whose body she lives in had jumped off a bridge in the first place. Thanks to the absurdity factor, the film is a comedy … a very dark comedy, though.
Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, Hair and Make-up, Adapted Screenplay and Original Score are areas for which Poor Things has been nominated. Emma Stone is amazing as she is tasked with portraying every stage of female development from toddler to mature woman. She and Mark Ruffalo are nominated for Acting, and Yorgos Lanthimos for Directing. The film is also one of 10 movies nominated as Best Picture.
This is visually a very unsettling film, despite the laughs, the beauty of its sets and the insights it offers into what is truly monstrous. Poor Things is “Rated R for strong and pervasive sexual content, graphic nudity, disturbing material, gore, and language” by the MPAA. See it if you have the stomach for it. If not, there are many other fine films to see.
