Poor Things (2023) Review

A dark and twisted tale of the evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman who was brought back to life by scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter and uses her as an experiment who he cannot keep trapped away when her nature to explore the world becomes too much.

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*This post contains possible spoilers*

This was never going to be a straightforward and simple story, this was always going to be complex and downright weird from the start. In that sense we are never let down, and quite frankly going into the film I was excited to find out how far the boundaries were going to be pushed. I have to admit that in the opening scene I was a little taken aback with Bella a young woman who couldn’t walk properly, couldn’t speak and had some very strange behaviour going on. Refering to the Dr as God.

It doesn’t take Baxter long to enlist some support from one of his students, Max McCandles to observe and monitor Bella’s progress as she is learning everything about life. Starting off with the basics of her movement and then the growing of her speech and vocabulary. An issue that quickly comes from this is that her understanding naturally does not match her speech and her physical appearance, her mental age was very very low but progressing at a rather alarming rate.

Ok, so why was she like that? I mean even I could not have guessed to the full extend of how she ended up that way. Baxter found her body after she jumped from a bridge and decided to do a ridiculous surgery by taking the brain from the baby she was pregnant with and placing into into Bella, hence the development needed. I mean yes, I was rather shocked with that turn.

Enter Duncan Wedderburn who would whisk her away to Europe and be fully taken in by her bizarre nature and behaviour. Just before he arrived she had just reached the point of realising her sexual desires and that was an area for him to explore with her. This then leads to many sex scenes. However, despite the good feelings she was given from this she didn’t fully understand the emotional nature and that quite frankly you aren’t supposed to do it with anyone and everyone. Well, I guess you can if you really want to.

The main way I ended up feeling about the film and the character of Bella Baxter was that this was a reset for whatever that body and woman had been through in the past and a new start. We are shown many different aspects of life through her and how quickly she is destroyed when her hopes and dreams are banished due to the way people would treat her. Wanting to explore and see the world I guess is the dream, but something will stand in your way at some point. Didn’t we all have high hopes and dreams at some point? Even if we don’t have them now, or the fact they have changed. That is how I felt for Bella, that she was very quickly destroyed by the world she longed for, and I guess that is why the Dr really wanted to protect her?

The twists and turns we go through constantly make you think “REALLY” as if things could never get worse. Ending up making money from sex and hitting the nail on the head about enjoyment which gets quite deep. It is wickedly funny at so many points, and I have to say that is that dark comedy where you aren’t sure whether your allowed to laugh or not. Well, I did when watching the film at the cinema and I could hear others laughing too.

The demise of Wedderburn was delightful and even though he deserved it all, I also couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He had no clue what had happened with Bella and everything he didn’t want to be and feel was brought out because of her. Her innocence and ignorance of society made her different from anyone he had ever met.

Seriously incredible performances with Emma Stone going all in, what can be described as a physical performance as well. I had even thought that she should have had a small role in the Barbie film given the stiffness of her movement at times. The screaming, the use of different words and then delivering some fantastic lines as well round off a rather perfect performance. Then we have Mark Ruffalo as we have never seen him before, and potentially a career best at this point? I mean again he goes all in, we aren’t meant to like him but I did find myself pitying him in the end. He has a truly hilarious accent and again is given some fantastic lines. Willem Dafoe also delivers an expectional performance and I couldn’t get used to how his face looked! Honestly those three perfomrances truly make the film. We also have some impressive support from Ramy Youssef, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine and Christopher Abbott.

Visually the film might make you feel a little bit dizy at times given the circular screen and camera moving at strange angles, but I guess that was to add more to those scenes. Throwing in the move from black and white whilst in the house to then the burst of colour when travelling and the boat scenes really allowing that to pushed to the limits. Blurring the lines between what looked like the real world, to a fantasy world and damn it worked.