Poor Things 2023

This review contains spoilers after the non spoiler section. Non spoiler thoughts (summary): Emma Stone completely disappears into the role. The production design, wardrobe, and score are all immaculate, shifting tones as Bella’s world expands. It is dense, provocative, and visually unforgettable, a film that invites interpretation rather than comfort. ⚠️ Spoilers ahead. From here on, plot details are discussed. Read on if you’ve seen the film. If not, save this post and come back after. ⚠️ This feels like a combination of The Favourite and The Lighthouse in terms of cinematography. You can really feel Yorgos Lanthimos continuing his visual language, but pushing it further into something more surreal, grotesque, and emotionally uncomfortable. At the center of it all is Bella, and Emma Stone completely disappears into Bella’s character. You never see Emma Stone, only Bella. Emma Stone feels like a child trapped in an adult body. The unbalanced walk, childish behavior, sudden tantrums, and blunt curiosity all sell that imbalance. It really feels like watching like the assessor in the movie The Assessment. That discomfort becomes sharper once sexuality enters the picture because I feel sorry for Bella. She has the brain of a child discovering the sexuality of an adult body, and that is deeply fucked up. There’s an inherent cruelty in watching her explore desire without the emotional and psychological tools to fully understand consent, power, and consequence. The film visually reinforces this tension through contrast. Life is boring and suffocating under the protection of Dr. Godwin, and how colorful and intoxicating it becomes once she explores the world beyond her home. I think this mirrors how women go through self discovery, finding their identity, and place in society, often only after leaving spaces that claim to “protect” them. It also shows how sexual desire can become addictive once tasted, especially when it’s tied to freedom, validation, and control over one’s body for the first time. Visually, the most striking element is the surreal sky. It looks like a painting, something out of this world, reinforcing that Bella exists in a world that doesn’t follow normal rules. The lenses feel similar to The Favourite, with extreme wide angles and distortion, but here they’re paired with anamorphic lenses that produce circular bokeh, giving everything a dreamlike, warped quality. It constantly reminds you that this is not reality as we know it, but Bella’s version of it. There’s that gory aspect that’s already apparent from Bugonia, and honestly I feel thankful that most of the surgery scenes are in black and white. It softens the blow. The black and white works because of the deeper blacks and less defined highlights. It strips the scenes of sensationalism and makes them colder and more disturbing. At its core, I think this film is about how men view women as property, or ownership. Men feel entitled to reconstruct women, control them, define them, and treat them as objects that can be replaced when they go missing. Different men impose different forms of control. One is patriarchal care, through Dr. Goodwin, controlling behavior under the guise of protection. Another, through Duncan, is performative decency, obsessed with image and possession. The film also shows how judgmental men are toward sex workers, and how that toxic thinking spreads to women judging other women, making womanhood itself more oppressive. I honestly don’t know how old Bella is supposed to be when Dr. Godwin suggests that Max marry her. It feels like dark humor, maybe a commentary on fixed marriages at a young age, or maybe another layer of how casually society ignores consent when power dynamics are involved. What’s ironic is Duncan saying he’s not the type to fall in love because he’s driven by adventure rather than commitment, yet he becomes jealous and emotionally unstable the moment he learns that someone else touched Bella. That hypocrisy exposes how men want freedom for themselves but control over women. The production design, wardrobe, hair and makeup, and musical score are all excellent. The score shifts depending on the scene, sometimes fun and quirky, sometimes cold, haunting, or grand, mirroring Bella’s emotional development. And Mark Ruffalo is hilarious, completely unhinged and pathetic at the same time. The film also touches on how wealthy people are hostile toward socialism, and how women often have little to no real choice when it comes to entering the sex industry. This film is incredibly dense. It has so many things to say about society, gender, power, sexuality, and control. I’m not entirely sure if all of these readings are intentional, or if some of them are my own projections. Maybe the director wants it to be taken literally. Maybe it’s all allegory. Either way, these were the thoughts that stayed wiath me while watching it.