Quick Synopsis: Bella Baxter is a young woman with the brain of a child, who goes on a journey of self/sexual discovery before her impending marriage.

I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, specifically, May 30th 2022, when I posted my review of On The Count Of Three, and mentioned that the two leads (Jerrod Carmichael and Christopher Abbot) will be sharing the screen in this. They didn’t actually share the screen at any point, but they are both vitally important to the plot in how they affect the lead character of Bella. Abbots’ character of Alfie Blessington is incredibly vile, one of the most despicable characters in modern cinema. It’s not just him though, the world of Poor Things is full of cruelty, abuse, and manipulation. It’s so cruel that it’s kind of uncomfortable to watch. The whole film is uncomfortable really. Bella’s sexual awakening is treated as a feminist story about her escaping the trappings of man and discovering herself. But considering she’s treated by men as the Ultimate Sexual Fantasy it’s kind of unsettling once you realise the implications. I mean, she has the mind of a child, clearly not understanding consent. There’s a lot of that, characters show their true selves not by how they act in public, but by how they treat Bella. There’s a fascinating “you’re defined by who you are in the dark” message, but it seems underdeveloped and like it’s not given enough care.

Something which was given care and love is the world that Lanthimos has created. It’s a visual masterpiece with ancient architecture and bright colours creating a real treat for the eyes. The skies in particular are breathtaking to watch, full of true beauty and wonder. The beauty of the visuals is matched by the performances. The aforementioned Abbot and Carmichael are great. Ruffalo is suitably pathetic, Dafoe brings his usual creepy energy, and Ramy Youssef is innocent but with dated notions of gender equality. But the real star is obviously Emma Stone. Most of the other performers could be replaced by someone similar, but only a handful of performers could bring what Stone does. It helps that she brings a tremendous physicality to the role. If she brings anything less than 100% she’d risk coming off (weirdly) as overacting. But because she throws herself completely into it, she’s believable, she does so much that she kind of feels grounded because “well nobody who was TRYING to be weird would do that”.

Now onto the downside, some of the music makes it difficult to pay attention. At times it’s so abrasive it feels like it doesn’t want you to be comfortable. I’m used to that when it comes to visuals, but uncomfortable sounds are different, it’s not just uncomfortable, it’s painful. It backs up my theory that sometimes Lanthimos doesn’t want you to like the film, and is actively hoping you’ll dislike it. It’s sometimes so weird that you can see it being off-putting to a lot of people. I wasn’t put off by the weirdness, but I was put off by how the script sometimes seemed to be made up as it was going along. At times it feels like it’s forgotten that it already made a point, and so makes it again in a slightly less effective way. There are a few things which feel like Chekovs Guns, but when they are eventually fired feel like a damp squib, like the writers realised “Oh shit, we set this thing up earlier, we need to pay it off quickly” and just had a quick line (as in, a line of dialogue, not cocaine).

It may be weird at times, but it does raise a lot of questions. Is it, as Samira Ahmed described it “a heterosexual middle-aged man’s fantasy about nymphomania, with the flimsiest covering of “satire” and a tagged-on message about female genital mutilation being “bad””, or is it as Leslie Felperin puts forward, just a tale of a woman “unburdened by any of the inhibitions women of her time would usually be tethered by, limiting their interests and ambitions”? Is it feminist? Misandrist? Misogynist? Or is it none of those things? That’s always up to interpretation, and no matter what you say about this film, you can’t say it’s boring and doesn’t inspire discussion. And sometimes that’s what you want from a film.