Poor Things movie review – pure empowerment

10 Jan Poor Things movie review – pure empowerment

This time last week I was sitting in Cinema Nova eating a cherry ripe choc top and watching Poor Things. It was a very interesting experience, and so I thought I would share my Poor Things movie review.

I loved it. Sure, I covered my eyes at some of the very gruesome shots – one of the main characters was a surgeon, and the movie did not shy away from gore, but I came away feeling incredibly empowered. The feminist in me loved this movie so much.

The scenery, costumes and characters were truly bizarre. A dog/chicken was the first indication that this brand of fantasy was particularly warped.

Bella Baxter was a truly wonderful character. A child’s mind inside a woman’s body. As her awareness grew, she found that she could make herself instantly happy via masturbation, and this led to an extremely healthy appetite for sex, which she explored with an interesting range of different male characters. Mark Ruffalo played a particularly obnoxious character who became obsessed with Bella and attempted to rein her in. She would not be curtailed! If there was one thing that I loved most about this film, it was the demonstrated power in ‘knowing oneself’. Bella was wonderfully curious about the world that she had evolved into, but she had a very strong sense of self. It was so inspiring.

The fantastical scenery and costumes made a wonderful set for this lovely story. And it made me think about the power of love too. The kind of love that evolves between two kind people who spend time getting to know each other playfully.

Awards

Poor Things has received significant critical acclaim. Indeed Emma Stone (Bella Baxter) won a Golden Globe award recently for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. film.

Poor Things was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Tony McNamara. It stars Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jerrod Carmichael. Based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, the plot focuses on Bella Baxter, a young woman living in Victorian-era London who, after being crudely resurrected by a scientist following her suicide, runs off with a debauched lawyer to embark on an odyssey of self-discovery and sexual liberation. – Wikipedia.

My Poor Things movie review gives four and a half stars! (It loses half a star for the eye-covering required during some gruesome scenes) 😛