Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a debauched lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows stea...
WHAT I LIKED: In an amusing parallel to the recent 'Barbie,' movie, Yorgos Lanthimos and Tony McNamara's 'Poor Things,' is a film about a woman with a child's brain encountering the complex world of sex, money and society for the first time.
The character in question is Bella (Emma Stone), a dead woman who has been re-animated by crazy scientist Dr. Baxter (Willem Dafoe) after he put a baby's brain in her head. Initially, she's imprisoned in Baxter's strange mansion, and she's confused and frustrated by his assistant (Ramy Yousef) telling her she can't openly indulge in sexual activities. But soon enough, lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) comes to steal her away on a trip across Europe. There she gets into all sorts of trouble as she tries to wrap her head around why she must be polite to people she doesn't like, why she can't have sex all the time, and why anyone would possibly exploit other people or allow inequality to exist.
That makes for a fascinating and often genuinely hilarious examination of the structures and taboos we accept in our daily lives, as Bella's lack of inhibition means she points out every nonsense rule she finds. You only buy her innocence though because she speaks like she's only learned the words and not the right ways to construct them, because her outfits look completely self-chosen, and, most of all, because the physicality of Emma Stone's miraculous performance makes it look like she's seeing everything with completely fresh eyes and struggling to wrap her head around the madness.
The world in front of her is appropriately mad too, as, from the Baxter mansion, to a cruise ship, to Central Lisbon and Paris, Lanthimos creates a whole bunch of brilliantly bizarre, Tim Burton-esque environments. Between the satirical realisations of art-deco buildings, she witnesses all spectrums of human behaviour, and there's even a moment where she witnesses "the poor," working in a mine, and the set design looks like it's been ripped straight from the pages of Greek mythology. All of that, especially when coupled with Jerskin Fendrix's frankly ridiculous score, creates a twisted picture of humanity for Bella to dissect with her fresh eyes.
Then, throughout the course of her adventure, she finds her place in the world as a fiercely independent rebel, and that makes for an engaging character arc to boot.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Perhaps partly because it's adapted from a long novel, there are things in the film which could have been cut and wouldn't have detracted from the thematic exploration or the central character arc - including the final twist that seems to have Bella re-discover what she's already learned about herself.
VERDICT: As a woman with a child's brain travels Europe, 'Poor Things,' makes for both a fascinating and hilarious dissection of our twisted world, and a brilliantly engaging character arc.
