Poor Things

Year 17, Day 263 - 9/20/25 - Movie #5,147

BEFORE: I've still got a little bit of time before the October horror chain starts - I can chip away at that list of Oscar winners and Oscar-nominated films, because really that should be the polestar here, any time there's a chance to work one of those in I should take it, otherwise what the heck am I doing here?  I'll still have like 28 films left on that list from 2024, but only like 8 from the previous two years. 20 films left from 2021, that's proving to be a tough bunch of films to get to - like "Coda" won Best Picture but I have not been able to get to it. Of course, the fact that it's on Apple TV doesn't help, that's like the one streaming service I can't get to, not without signing up for a free trial and then cancelling, again.

Ramy Youssef carries over from "Mountainhead". I took so long getting to "Poor Things" that the director went ahead and made another film the next year, so I'll get to that one tomorrow, as there's a few people who will then carry over. 

THE PLOT: An account of the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. 

AFTER: Of course I made it a top priority to get to this movie, once it appeared on Hulu - but those were just good intentions, because it took me what, 18 months to get to it? February of 2024 it premiered on Hulu, and well, I've been busy or the linking just wasn't there, take your pick. I suppose it didn't help that I dropped "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" in to the horror chain last October, that took away Willem Dafoe as a possible link. Plus this film wasn't listed as a horror film, and isn't it? Kinda sorta? I mean, we're talking about a brain transplant into a dead body and re-animating that, how is that not the "Frankenstein" story, just gender-swapped and turned into an elegant-looking dark comedy? Mad scientist, check. A creature who is only marginally self-aware and causes harm to others? Check. 

But, of course, there are massive differences - just as Mary Shelley took the Prometheus myth and changed it all around to make "Frankenstein", that book was possibly just a jumping-off point so Yorgos Lanthimos so he could take it in a completely new direction. I'd love to know the workshopping or the focus group that brought this story to life - was it "What if the monster was a woman?" or "What if Frankenstein's monster had the brain of a baby?" or "What if you dated a reanimated corpse, what would happen?" And there's an entirely different point to telling this story, like "Frankenstein" was all about how science could get out of control, and how the scientist was the REAL monster because he messed with the natural order of life and death. 

There's maybe a little bit of that left here, like a vestigial amount perhaps, because the scientist is named "Godwin" and Bella just calls him "God" for short, ah I see what you did there, the symbolism of science replacing religion or at least being in contrast to it. But we're not here for that, because really the elevator pitch is "What if Frankenstein were a sex comedy?" and all the valid points about the absurdities of human relationships kind of spins out of control from that. Plus throw in body horror, steampunk and absurdism and you'll realize there's really a lot going on here. 

Somebody thought a lot about this, if you put the brain of a baby in the body of a woman, how would she act? How would she walk, how would she dance (other than poorly) and how would she relate to other humans? How much would she understand about life, and how long would you be able to keep her sheltered before she wants to go out and explore the world. What happens when she discovers gourmet food, alcohol, and sex? What could possibly go wrong, other than everything? Really, I'm there for it, and I kept thinking back to the director's previous film, "The Lobster", about a society where single people are sent to dating camps and if they can't find their mate within 30 days then they are surgically turned into an animal of their choosing, which is of course bonkers, but the story had something to say about relationships and how ridiculous it is to expect EVERYONE to find their person in a particular amount of time. Look, it happens when it happens, you can help it along but you can't force it. Also, it's really OK to be single if that's what life has in store for you, or the way you want to live, you don't have to kill yourself if you're not partnered up. That was my take-away, other answers may be possible.

So I think, amazingly, there's some semi-decent relationship advice we can find here, even though NONE of us have dated a person who was dead and then got a brain transplant from a baby and got re-animated. Right? But if we just think of her as someone who is bad at relationships because she just doesn't know any other way to be, this suddenly becomes a lot more relatable. Remember when you awkwardly discovered about touching yourself? You had no idea what you were doing, you just know it felt good and you wanted to keep doing it. Same time the first time you had a partner, maybe you had a lot of uncertainty, but similarly it felt good for you and your partner, and you wanted to keep doing it. Now just remove all the hang-ups that were placed on you by your parents or religious leaders or teachers - or, possibly, all of the above - and you kind of get Bella Baxter, she's like a kid with a new toy and she wants to keep playing. "Furious jumping" she calls it, and she wants more with different people, and she's not bound by any moral code. I almost wish we could all be that free, but I know it would be chaos. 

Without morality, she's got no concept of what "cheating" is or why it's bad, same goes for promiscuity, STDs, self-control, politeness, embarrassment, shame - without these things, you have to figure sex would be more rampant and life would be better, across the board, right? Mainly because you'd be having sex whenever possible and then not getting into trouble in other ways, there just wouldn't be time. Plus sex is kind of like exercise so you'd probably slim down because of boning all the time, plus less time to eat. Oh, yeah, Bella also eats a lot of luxurious food, again, no self-control, so let's assume that all that sex keeps her fit and one problem kind of takes care of the other. 

But by definition, she's also a sociopath, because she doesn't care what other people think of her, or how she's hurting her fiancé by having sex with other people, running off on adventures with another man. Also, this isn't fair to Duncan, the other man, because here he is having all this sex with her and he didn't know she was even engaged. Now Duncan knows he can't have Bella, not fully, and it drives him crazy. Literally, he ends up in a looney bin. But before that she leaves him alone, gives away all his gambling winnings, and they get stranded in Paris without any money. 

This leads Bella to a rather fancy establishment where she finds work, only it's a whorehouse. Well, when you remove all the moral guardrails, logically it's a place where she can make money doing something she LOVES to do, and as long as the hours aren't too strenuous, sure, it seems like a perfect plan. She can even meet a whole bunch of interesting people and work on her social skills, which have been lacking, let's face it. But eventually she gets bored after she's had sex with everyone in Paris, male or female, so finally she has enough money to go back to London (?) and check in on her creator, God, only to find that he's dying from cancer. 

There's a lot more to the story, I've really only scratched the surface here, and this one runs deep. I really want to learn more about how this wacko story came to be, because I think it's got a lot to say, metaphorically. Am I reading it right? I honestly have no idea, perhaps it's so rich in meaning that different people are going to see their own experiences reflected back to them, or things that remind them of relationships they had, and so I think different people are going to walk away from this film with different inspirations. Maybe I can say that about a lot of movies, but it feels really applicable here. Maybe you were the faithful one while someone who had no moral code cheated on you, or maybe you were the cheater and you blew a relationship up and moved on when it felt right. Maybe you just THOUGHT about it but you agonized over the implications so much that you stayed too long, and you fantasized about burning your life to the ground and started over. We've all been in situations that were maybe close to what's depicted here, at least in spirit even if the details don't all line up. 

In the larger scale, what is life but a journey during which we learn something new at each stop on the itinerary from the people who we meet there?  Some destinations will be to our liking, in other places we may not be so well received, but if things don't go your way, you can always move on to the next stop or you can always end the trip and head back home, it's up to you. You're the captain of your own ship, ideally, and you need to be in charge of where it's going, if not then other people are going to determine that for you, and you may not be as happy. And if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy. Punch a higher floor. Cut the bad people out of your life and move on, or give them a transplanted animal brain if you're feeling particularly vindictive. 

I think I'm right here, but I'm going to go to IMDB and Wiki to check, the film is about living by your own rules, not the ones that everybody says you have to follow. Right? I'm a little concerned only because so many young people right now are already DOING this, like sure, I support trans rights and people becoming influencers and breakfastarians and furries and atheists and whatever else they can think of, but then I'm only worried about what's going to happen when everybody gets to live the life they want to lead and they STILL don't feel satisfied. What happens then? I have no idea but something tells me I don't think I want to find out. 

But in the meantime, this film feels like Mary Shelley and John Waters and Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam and, OK, while we're at it, Woody Allen and David Cronenburg all came together and made a steampunk sex comedy with a bunch of body horror in it. And somehow all of that...works? I can't explain it. What do you get when you mix "Frankenstein" and "Alice in Wonderland" with "Emmanuelle"?

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (director of "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", "The Favourite" and "The Lobster")

Also starring Emma Stone (last seen in "Cruella"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Dark Waters"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Christopher Abbott (last seen in "Hello I Must Be Going"), Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Kathryn Hunter (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Vicki Pepperdine (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Margaret Qualley (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), Hanna Schygulla, Keeley Forsyth (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), John Locke (last seen in "Cyrano"), Kate Handford, Owen Good, Damien Bonnard (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Tom Stourton (last seen in "Barbie"), Raphael Thiery, Wayne Brett (last seen in "The Song of Names"), Carminho, Jerskin Fendrix, Jack Barton, Charlie Hiscock (last seen in "The Borrowers" (2011)), Attila Dobal, Attila Kecskemethy, Vivienne Soan, Istvan Goz (last seen in "The Debt"), Jeremy Wheeler (last seen in "The Brutalist"), Laurent Winkler (ditto), Patrick de Valette, Boris Gillot, Yorgos Stefanakos, Hubert Benhamdine, Laurent Borel, Gabor Patay, Andrew Hefler (last seen in "Season of the Witch"), David Bromley (last seen in "Tolkien"), Roderick Hill (last seen in "Infinity Pool")

RATING: 8 out of 10 oysters at the raw bar