In “Poor Things,” Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) has an unconventional journey to self-discovery. And yet, like so many women before her, at some point that journey finds her stuck with a conniving, slightly stupid man.
Bella was once a very different Victorian lady whose life led her in a tragic, deathly direction. But when the scientist Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) reanimates her corpse, she is born again – a babbling child in the body of an adult, serving as the conduit for director Yorgos Lanthimos’s surrealist, ostensibly feminist, spin on the classic “Frankenstein” tale. As Bella starts to grow into herself, she flees the nest, running off with a handsome fop of a lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) with a talent for sex. But as the shine of Duncan’s prowess in the sack begins to wear off, Bella starts to yearn for something Duncan cannot provide. She wants to discover the wonder of the world. He wants to figure out how he can cheat it.
While on a cruise, Bella befriends Harry Astley (Jerrod Carmichael), a cynic dead set on teaching her that the world is not such a wonderful place. Their discussions cover a range of topics, but in one moment it turns back to Duncan. “Why do you stay with him?,” Harry asks. Bella responds: “I always think it will be better.”
This answer underscores a couple of turning points in “Poor Things,” but only one of them really comes to any fruition. The most fully-formed aspect of Lanthimos’s film is the relationship between Bella and Duncan. Bella’s journey is not just one of sexual discovery, but self possession as well, and when analyzing that journey through the dynamics of a relationship, “Poor Things” is sharply funny and cutting. But outside of that relationship, the jokes lose their edge and the film tends to flatten the growth of its heroine into something a little more superficial.
Lanthimos has always had an eye for the beauty in distortion, and “Poor Things” is no exception. Seemingly endless sets hold a Victorian dreamscape, warped with odd angles and bright colors, fantastical and macabre all at once. The camera is similarly marked by distortion – cinematographer Robbie Ryan shot some scenes with an 8mm fisheye lens, its wide-angle scope so acute that the sets needed to almost wrap around the camera. The distortion plays with audience perspective, in particular adding dimension to Bella’s cooped up existence in Dr. Baxter’s home at the beginning of the film.
Bella’s life is charted by the decisions of the men around her, but it’s only when she runs off with Duncan that the film starts to distort audience expectations as well. “Poor Things” almost works better as an exploration of emotional power dynamics between men and women than it does a one-woman odyssey, and together, Stone and Ruffalo are unfettered in their absurdity. For Duncan, Bella is the sexy baby trope personified – a trope ever present and made fun of throughout the film (although often more at the expense of men rather than for Bella’s benefit). He picked her solely because she is an adult woman who he believes is naive enough for him to pull one over on. His plan – to love her and leave her as soon as he gets bored – only works if she’s malleable enough to be manipulated.
Unfortunately, for Duncan, Bella comes not just with a childlike innocence, but a childlike bluntness (“I must go punch that baby,” she says flatly at a dinner at one point, slamming her napkin down before standing up to quiet a screaming child) and a childlike curiosity that cannot be quelled. She’s also much smarter than Duncan gives her credit for. Her decision to leave with him is spurred purely by sexual interest rather than some wide-eyed belief that he’s in love with her – despite all his eyebrow wagging and breathy tones. It quickly becomes clear to Duncan that while Bella likes having sex with him, she’s generally displeased with him in most other arenas. Her disinterest in his intellect and blatant disregard for his feelings on the matter makes him obsessed with her – a funhouse mirror flip on the usual dynamic we’re fed about men and women.
Eventually (and for her sake, for the best), Bella leaves Duncan behind. But after discovering that her first boyfriend is a bit of a loser, Bella’s journey is marred by a simplicity I can’t get past. On the cruise, her conversations with Harry don’t just spur her to consider the pitfalls of her relationship with Duncan, but the complexities of the world as well. He is the one who introduces her to concepts like poverty and violence, to philosophy and politics, concepts she would theoretically continue to explore. For a good chunk of the movie, Bella works as sex worker, the brothel billed to us as a place where, while it certainly has its downsides, her world continues to open up. There’s a snippet of her having sex with a woman for the first time, another of her and that same woman headed to a socialist rally.
But snippets are all these moments really amount to, pushed to the side in favor of making men the butt of the joke instead of taking the time to explore Bella more fully. While this can be extremely funny – for example, Mark Ruffalo yelling “Bella” up at the balcony of a brothel, doing his worst Marlon Brando impression – it’s not all that liberating, sexually or otherwise. The jokes and the barbs between Duncan and Bella during the meat of their relationship hit because there’s a warped sense of familiarity to that dynamic, making it all the more biting in its commentary. But, particularly during the sex worker phase of the film, some attempts to make us laugh inadvertently pull attention away from Bella. “Poor Things” sometimes spends more time ridiculing men than it does focusing on its heroine’s evolution.
The beginning of “Poor Things” is shot in black and white, chronicling Bella’s days at Dr. Baxter’s home, cooped up and unable to experience the world for herself. When she leaves with Duncan, the world explodes into a swirl of color. But if that color is meant to signify freedom, I’m not so sure the film fully makes that leap by its end.