I have mixed feelings about a supposedly feminist film directed by a man. Shocker!

“Poor Things” follows Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), who is a woman with an infant’s brain surgically put into her (she’s mentally a child but physically an adult) by a mad scientist, Godwin Baxter (Willem DaFoe). She ‘grows up’ as a test subject under his and his assistant Max McCandles’ (Ramy Youssef) strict supervision completely caged from the outside world. Soom, she begins to discover various urges within herself and also wishes to see new places. Once she has had enough, she runs off on an adventure to Europe with a shady lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) and comes across colorful characters (a cynic, a pimp, socialists etc.), exchanges with whom teach her a lot about the world and help her navigate womanhood and adulthood.

This is a movie that demands to be watched at a theater. Every visual element of the film, from more technical aspects like the set design to more creative aspects like cinematography is innovative and new. You could pause it at any moment and chances are the shot would be good enough to use as a poster for your wall. Lanthimos’ use of wide lens cameras to show different settings effectively conveyed to the audience the vastness of this world that Bella is experiencing anew. His use of a fish-eye lens makes it seem like you are peering into this dreamy, fairytale-like world through a peephole watching an odd story unfold. The vibrant colors and costumes evoke an Alice in Wonderland esque feeling. 

Emma Stone’s performance was incredible. Given that her character is essentially a rapidly growing baby, it’s impressive how seamlessly she changes her cadence and vocabulary to gradually match that of an adult as time progresses. She truly commits to this role, pouring lots of heart into every little bit of body language and dialogue. Mark Ruffalo was great as well, especially with his comedic timing. I had no idea he was chill like that. 

I guess the movie ends happily as Bella seems to have some sort of agency: she’s pursuing a career in STEM with a socialist girlfriend by her side. Still, I can’t help but feel dissatisfied at how some things were handled.

[SPOILERS] 

Bella comes back home from her Europe trip to visit Godwin Baxter on his deathbed. She has now matured, and understands what he did to her. For someone who wanted to own Bella to achieve his scientific goals and maybe to demonstrate a fucked up version of love, Godwin got off pretty easy. Their confrontation went too smoothly. He faces no real consequences or resentment from Bella. Him dying an unfulfilled man could be considered a consequence, but that doesn’t have much to do with Bella specifically. She reunites with Max McCandles, someone who ‘fell in love’ with Bella, got engaged to her, and became abusive in an attempt to restrain her when she wanted to go off to see the world, all while she possessed the mind of a child. He was portrayed favorably to the point where a letterboxd user said that “everyone needs a Max in their life” and people seemed to agree. Absolutely not. Duncan Wedderburn, charming but deeply misogynistic with his constant remarks about Bella’s character, is played for laughs. The movie introduces another man named Alfie Blessington towards the end, Bella’s husband from her life before the brain surgery as Victoria Blessington, who tries to kill her when he can’t get her to live with him again on his terms. Godwin, Max and Duncan look tame in comparison to Alfie which allows the film to gloss over their actions. Overall, there is a lack of accountability on part of these three characters which may give off the impression to the viewers that these kinds of people are more redeemable than they actually are. 

Moreover, a large chunk of the movie focuses on Bella’s changing body. After ‘hitting puberty’, she explores her newfound sexual needs through masturbation and tons of sex. Even though her exploring her body as a woman is a major theme, the film doesn’t talk about things like menstruation. This is not to say that one’s womanhood is defined by the ability to menstruate, but rather to point out how creators will often choose to include and exclude certain elements depending on how well they cater to the male gaze. For example, media set in medieval times portray heavy sexual violence towards women because it’s ‘realistic’ for that setting, but don’t portray feminine body hair which would also make sense for that time as they wouldn’t have easy access to grooming materials. It seems like in Poor Things, they decided to skip inconvenient topics like menstruation and birth control to show bodily change and focus solely on her sexual needs because that would be more of a spectacle. There has also been lots of discourse about the frequent sex scenes. I don’t really have a problem with them, but I do wonder if they could have been executed differently. Less gratuitous, perhaps, because I really don’t think the movie needed that cucumber scene.

I started this thing off by saying that I’m not surprised that these problems exist in a movie directed by a man but I realize I shouldn’t be focusing on that. This was Lanthimos’ first attempt at a mainstream film, and maybe in order to gain some of the large audience and give it a mainstream entertainment factor, he had to lose out on some nuance. A similar blockbuster example that comes to mind is Barbie (2023). This makes me wonder if there really exists such a tradeoff when it comes to tackling complex issues in a commercially appealing way. Ultimately, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You just kind of sit there motionless and look at it. It’s not that fun to think about. I think I want cake.