“I have adventured it and found nothing but sugar and violence.” Bella Baxter (Emma Stone)
From Voltaire to Tim Burton and Frankenstein to Wes Anderson, Poor Things has just about all you could ask for in a fantastic fairy tale about a late nineteenth-century girl coming of age in a world she is determined won’t be dominated by men. Throw in an Oscar-worthy lead performance by Emma Stone, and you will have a pseudo-bio to give Barbie and Nyad a serious run for Oscar and Golden Globes.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) once again shows he’s a tough competitor for the most imaginative film of the year. Without Time Burton, it’s his year for the wildest story with challenging themes, gorgeous sets, and bizarre characters, none more strange than mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (who else but Willem Dafoe?). He has resurrected Bella (Emma Stone) with the brain of a child, who eventually roams the great cities of the world such as Paris and London looking for pleasure and growing incrementally in her understanding of human foibles, especially men’s.
She blithely takes a job as a sex worker, having learned about sexual pleasure and agency through louche cad Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo in another Oscar-worthy role). Her bildungsroman experiences, from which she learns how to navigate a corrupt society, leave her far and away from the poor creation of the crazed Dr. Baxter.
From the expressionistic Baxter lab to the toy-like luxury liner, the set design is almost as sumptuous as Barbie’s, and Bella’s developing libertine persona is more colorful than even commercially-successful Barbie’s. That Stone is the leading Oscar-worthy role of 2023 is obvious; that her character has much more to say about equality and Puritanism than any other film of that year will be manifest at the end of the Oscar 2024 ceremony.
Duncan’s attempt to reel in Bella’s uncontrolled language by giving her only these three responses could as well describe Poor Things: “How marvelous,” “Delighted,” and “How do they make the pastry so crisp?”
Poor Things
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster)
Screenplay: Tony McNamara (The Favourite), based upon the novel by Alasdair Gray
Cast: Emma Stone (La La Land), Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight)
Run Time: 2h 21m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
