Film / Poor Things

"A woman plotting her course to freedom. How delightful!"

"We must experience everything, not just the good, but degradation, horror, sadness. This makes us whole. Then we can know the world. And when we know the world… The world is ours."

— Madame Swiney

Poor Things is a 2023 Science Fantasy Black Comedy film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Tony McNamara, starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Abbott, Ramy Youssef, and Jerrod Carmichael. It is an adaptation of the 1992 book of the same name by Alasdair Gray.

Soft-spoken medical student Max McCandles (Youssef) is recruited for a special task by his mysterious surgical instructor, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Dafoe): observing Bella (Stone), a strange, childlike young woman in Baxter's care. Max eventually learns that Bella is an experiment crafted out of the body of a pregnant woman who committed suicide and the brain of her unborn baby. Despite this, he's smitten by her beauty and agrees to Dr. Baxter's suggestion that he marry her, even as Bella's awareness (and desire for sexual pleasure) increases and she becomes frustrated by her creator's insistence that she must never leave his house. The caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo) is intrigued by the idea of a woman so fascinating that she requires a marriage contract that stipulates she must be hidden away from the world, and after meeting the now very sexually curious Bella, he spirits her away on a grand tour of Europe. But it's not just Bella's libido that's growing and maturing, and as she comes into her own as a curious, altruistic, and intelligent young woman, she quickly outgrows the shallow and chauvinistic Wedderburn and sets out to claim her own destiny.

Poor Things premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 1st, 2023. It was theatrically released in the United States on December 8th, 2023, and in the United Kingdom on January 12th, 2024.

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"I must go punch these tropes."

• Abusive Parents: Dr. Godwin Baxter's father made him the subject of all sorts of twisted "experiments", resulting in his scarred appearance.
• Actor Allusion:
  • While in Lisbon, Bella notes an aquarium full of zebra fish, the same kind of fish as the character of Gil, voiced by Willem Dafoe in Finding Nemo.
• Adaptational Alternate Ending: The majority of the book is written from the point of view of Archibald McCandles (Max in the film) and his account ends at roughly the same point as the film. The book then continues in the form of a letter written by Bella, who is now going by Victoria; she has read her late husband's book and is, in short, disgusted by it. She gives her own, much more realistic, version of the story, revealing that she never attempted suicide or was pregnant (let alone some sort of Frankensteinian abomination), that she was deeply in love with Godwin, who was a completely normal and attractive man but who rejected all romantic entanglements, and that she never really cared much for Archie at all, seeing him as a tolerable convenience. Some events are the same, such as her running away from her first husband, living with Godwin, and getting engaged to Archie but then running away with Wedderburn, but she puts Archie's fantastical retelling down as a way to hide his own inadequacies as a man, doctor, and husband. The book then ends with the "editor" Alasdair Gray giving a historical account of the remainder of Victoria's life up to her death.
• Alternate Universe: The world as depicted in this film uses Steampunk technology and Art Nouveau styling on most buildings, and while Bella's behavior certainly shocks the people around her, her unconventional fashion sense and unstyled hair don't seem to make any impact on how's she's perceived at all. The older buildings in London combine the aforementioned Art Nouveau style with Brutalism, which wasn't introduced until the 1960s in the real world. On top of the visual divergences from reality, the plot hinges on Frankensteinian mad science as easily practicable, just untried. What makes it an alternate universe and not just an Anachronism Stew is that one of Duncan and Bella's dining companions in Lisbon alludes to The Importance of Being Earnest as a "new play of Wilde's" that just opened back in London, which sets the story concretely in 1895.
• Alliterative Name: Bella Baxter and Max McCandles.
• Ambiguous Situation: Alfie Blessington tells Bella that his wife Victoria, the original occupant of her body, killed herself because she hated her unborn baby (who became Bella via a brain transplant into Victoria's body), and shared Alfie's delight in casual cruelty toward servants. When we briefly see Victoria in a flashback to the time of her suicide, however, she's staring unhappily at the water below the bridge with tears in her eyes before taking a deep breath and jumping. Was Alfie telling the truth? Or did Victoria kill herself to escape Alfie's abuse and spare their child from it? The screenplay clears things up slightly: when Bella asks Alison, the servant, if "she was nice", she only barks out a laugh, implying that Alfie was telling the truth to some degree.
• Artifact Title: The book was called Poor Things because nearly every character in the novel uses "poor [name]" for either themselves or others at least once. In the film, that's mostly reduced to Bella not knowing how to express grief for her (fictional) parents early in her development except by mumbling "poor Bella" about herself.
• Artistic License – Biology: A film featuring Mix-and-Match Critters created by surgery, Victorian-period brain transplants, and Frankensteinian reanimation of the dead by electricity has obviously left scientific plausibility as a distant dot in its rear-view mirror.
• Art Nouveau: The film's spectacular production design blends Art Nouveau style with Steampunk.
• Bait-and-Switch: In Paris, one of Bella's johns brings his two young sons with him, saying that he wants them to gain experience in lovemaking firsthand. We're led to believe that the man wants Bella to have sex with his underage sons, but instead, he has sex with Bella while his sons observe and take notes.
• Bathroom Search Excuse: Curious about the kind of woman that would warrant such a restrictive marriage contract, Duncan claims that he really needs to use the bathroom, as he has a weak bladder, and then goes off to search for Bella.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: During the flashback to Bella's creation, despite her undergoing a total brain transplant, her hair is untouched except for a patch at the back of her head that Dr. Baxter opens to swap the brains (rather than her head being shaved for easier access). Additionally, there is never any indication after that scene of that part of Bella's hair having to grow in again after being shaved off, though it's justified by Max's report that her hair grows half an inch a day.
• Bitch Slap: Bella slaps Duncan, provoking a bewildered Delayed Reaction from him before he lets out a small "Ow!"
• Bio Punk: While the rest of the world has technology with a Steampunk aesthetic, Dr. Baxter seems more interested in dissecting human cadavers and surgically creating Mix-and-Match Critters. He eats using an advanced system of machines in place of a stomach, and his initial issue with having sex with Bella is less an aversion to pseudo-incest and more that it would take "all of London's electrical power" for him to sexually perform at all as a result of his own father's experimentation on him. (After that, however, his "paternal feelings" kicked in and he saw her as too much of a daughter.)
• Bloody Hilarious: Dr. Baxter lets Bella play with cadavers he's no longer using while she's early in her development. This leads to Bella repeatedly stabbing one corpse in the face until there's not much of a face left, with all the innocent glee of a toddler smashing a cupcake. It's visually disturbing but played entirely for laughs.
• Break the Cutie: Bella hits her breaking point in Alexandria, when Harry shows her the poor people living and dying in poverty, including children, as she now sees how cruel the world can be.
• Came Back Wrong: Thoroughly averted with Bella, though the fresh brain certainly didn't hurt. Possibly played straight with Felicity, though the ending suggests she's improving.
• Coming of Age Story: The whole movie is essentially a very strange one, featuring someone growing up, discovering their independence and sexuality, and fully maturing as a person.
• Compressed Adaptation: The book is split into four parts, with the largest, the second, being what is adapted to screen. Even this is somewhat truncated as the book gives significant focus to the landscape, architecture, and history of Glasgow, where most of it is set.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The first chapter of the film, as well as the surreal interstitials, are shot in black-and-white.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Early in the film, Max calls Bella a "beautiful retard" with genuine admiration, and Dr. Baxter betroths her to him rather quickly afterwards (even though she, at the time, has the literal mind of a child). This is in line with the Victorian-adjacent time period the film seems to be set in.
• Do You Wantto Copulate: Bella never learned to absorb societal hang-ups about sex because she's so young. When she discovers self-pleasure, she immediately offers to stimulate Mrs. Prim and Max.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After a trip across Europe that leads her through heartbreak and exploitation, Bella is back at home in the Baxter residence, happily married to Max (with Toinette at her side as well) and studying to become a doctor. Felicity, while not as advanced as Bella, is learning at her own pace. And the brain of her abusive ex-husband has been replaced with a goat's.
• Euphemism Buster: When Bella asks Duncan "Why keep it in my mouth if it is revolting?" after spitting out her food at dinner with another couple, this exchange happens:
  Woman: I say that sometimes to Gerald.
  Duncan: (chortling) Oh, you are wicked!
  Bella: ...ohhhh, because you mean his penis!
• Exact Words: After Bella embarrasses Duncan at dinner, he orders her to limit her conversational input to three phrases: "How marvelous", "Delighted", and "How do they get the pastries so crisp?" When they rejoin their table, one of their dinner partners tells Duncan that her father is seriously ill and not long for this world — to which Bella replies with a cheerful "How marvelous! How do they get the pastries so crisp?"
• False Reassurance: With it being increasingly obvious that he intends to imprison Bella inside the mansion under the guise of curing her "amnesia" (with an outright threat of shooting her in the head if she tries to leave), Alfie attempts to reframe the situation as him being sure that she will be as happy in their marriage as she was before. An incredulous Bella lampshades that this is the same before where she ultimately threw herself off a bridge.
• Feminist Fantasy: The film is about a Victorian baby resurrected in her mother's body who, against all patriarchal odds, learns about the world, self-actualizes and finds agency. Come the end of the story, she's studying to be a doctor, she's married to a man who loves and supports her while also respecting her bodily autonomy, she's also possibly resumed her relationship with her female lover, she's made sure that her/her mother's abusive ex-husband can never hurt her or anyone else ever again, and another woman created in the same manner as her is flourishing under her care.
• Flesh Golem:
  • Bella is a downplayed example of this, as all of her was created from one intact body except for her brain (which came from that body's unborn baby daughter).
  • Dr. Baxter is simultaneously a milder example (due to never having died) and a more alarming one (because unlike the beautiful and only mildly scarred Bella, his face bears the horrific results of having been multiply grafted with parts of other faces by his own even-madder scientist father).
  • Felicity may be one, too, or she might just be resurrected (hence her trouble developing at Bella's pace).
• Foil: Max and Duncan are the film's main contenders for Bella's regard. At the start of the story, Max is sincere but also awkward and passive, going along with Baxter's aim to keep Bella confined and ignorant of her origins, while Duncan is suave, charismatic and facilitates Bella's departure to freedom and exploring the world. As the story progresses, however, Max grows more confident and willing to speak his mind, particularly when it comes to Baxter's treatment of Felicity, while Duncan is humiliated, bankrupted and driven to madness by Bella's refusal to cater to his whims. Duncan is enraged when he learns that Bella has turned to sex work, while Max takes the news (mostly) in stride, stressing that Bella's body is her own and confessing to being envious of the men who spent so much time with her. Duncan, despite his numerous failings, is a fantastic lover, while Max clearly needs to work on his kissing skills. Finally, while Duncan confronts Bella with her mother's husband Alfie and nearly ruins her life, Max assists her in ridding herself of the threat Alfie poses for good.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A woman in Lisbon greets Bella as "Victoria Blessington", much to Bella's confusion. It turns out that Bella's body was originally Victoria Blessington's. Victoria committed suicide, but her body was reanimated with the transplanted brain of her own unborn daughter.
  • Chloroform recurs a couple of times in the film, once to subdue Bella when she's throwing a temper tantrum, and again when Bella subdues Max in order to escape with Duncan. Alfie attempts to drug Bella with chloroform so that a surgeon can mutilate her genitals, but she throws it in his face, which is enough to immobilize him (along with being shot in the leg).
• For Science!: The main motivation for Dr. Baxter to create Bella was that: He wanted to know if he could and treats her mostly as an experiment (but later develops feelings for her). Dr. Baxter also recalls his father would put him through many physical abuse in the interest of science when he was a child.
• The Glomp: Bella lands one on Dr. Baxter when he calls her to meet Max McCandles, leaping in the air and hugging him with both her arms and legs.
• A God Am I: Mad scientist Godwin Baxter is referred to by Bella as God, which is fitting as he created her. He also jokes about this nickname with Max after hiring him as an assistant.
• Gothic Horror: The film is a strange case of a story that borrows many elements from this genre, including human reanimation via mad science, a mysterious suicide, a rake with ill intentions toward the heroine, and the heroine spending a stint imprisoned in a gloomy old manor by a sinister nobleman, but spins them into a much more hopeful and bright Coming of Age story. The biggest Gothic influence is Frankenstein, but here the Mad Scientist is a loving (if overprotective) father-figure and his creation is a beautiful and inquisitive young woman, whose voyage into understanding the world broadens her horizons and makes her even more empathetic instead of alienating her from it the way Frankenstein's Monster was alienated when he wandered Europe.
• Groin Attack: Bella kicks a man in the nards from behind during a brawl at a ballroom scene.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Dr. Godwin Baxter occasionally details some of the cruel physical experiments his father put him through. What makes these moments comedic is that he shares these experiences calmly and like regular childhood memories, while the listeners, usually Max, are horrified.
• Idiot Hero: Bella openly admits her ability to think logically is "not the best," and she often gets tricked and manipulated by the people around her. Justified, as she literally has the brain of an infant, and over time she grows to be as intelligent as her creator.
• Innocently Insensitive: Bella doesn't understand basic etiquette and constantly embarrasses Duncan with her unintentionally rude comments, such as blithely commenting on Martha's lack of a sex life and discussing a bordello client's ugliness right in front of him.
• Irony: Alfie Blessington plans to forcibly impregnate Bella after having her clitoris removed. Throughout Bella's months traveling Europe, she's never shown to menstruate, and has unprotected sex with dozens of men while working in Madame Swiney's bordello without becoming pregnant. Bella probably can't have children to begin with, presumably as a consequence of the surgery that Godwin performed on her body.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Harry shows Bella a scene of wretched poverty in Alexandria in an attempt to shatter her idealistic worldview — not out of malice but to justify his cynicism. He later realizes this was cruel and apologizes.
  • In a very foul mood after Bella gives his money away, Duncan invokes this almost literally when he threatens to kick a passing Parisian's dog to death when it gets close to him.
  • Madame Swiney makes one of her prostitutes, Toinette, sleep with an unappealing client without pay because she dared to complain.
  • Alfie, Bella's husband in her past life as Victoria, deliberately startles one of his servants into spilling hot soup over herself and threatens another with a gun because he tried to clear away Alfie's dinner plate before he was finished.
• Kids Are Cruel: When Bella still has the mental faculties of a child, she kills a frog purely out of childish sadism and delights in stabbing the eyes of a cadaver. Max is clearly creeped out by her behavior, but he falls for her just the same.
• Male Frontal Nudity: The film includes a fair amount of it. Bella even plays with a corpse's penis at the start.
• Mad Scientist:
  • Dr. Godwin Baxter has similar ambitions to the most famous mad scientist in literature, Dr. Frankenstein, and shares much of the same style, resurrecting a suicide and creating Mix-and-Match Critters, though he takes considerably more care of his human experiments.
  • Godwin's own father was also an example, who rather horrifically used young Godwin himself as his subject, which left Godwin with a patchwork face, no genitals, no digestive system, and by implication many other unseen scars and mutilations.
  • Bella carries on the family tradition along with Max after Dr. Baxter dies, studying to become a doctor herself. Her first experiment is swapping Alfie Blessington's brain with that of a goat.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Bella qualifies as a particularly twisted variation on this trope, as both Max and Duncan fall in love with her while she is mentally a child. Once she matures into an "adult", Duncan loses interest due to her newfound intellect whereas Max's desire to marry her increases significantly.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: A gender-inverted example. Bella does on more than one occasion say that her relationship with Duncan is "just for fun" and implies that she will discard him eventually to marry Max.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Deconstructed. Bella is more or less a manic pixie for Duncan, but his carefree lifestyle and attitude are utterly broken by the time she realizes she's too good for him, and he's driven crazy by her to the point of being committed to an asylum. Given how he behaves, he probably deserves it.
• Marry Them All: The film ends with Bella enjoying both Max and Toinette's company.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Bella is seen interacting with Dr. Baxter's other creations, these being a goose and a dog with switched-up and sewn heads and a duck-headed goat.
• Mood Lighting: The scenes set in Alexandria are given an jaundiced yellow tone, adding to the discomfort Bella feels upon witnessing extreme poverty and inequality for the first time.
• Noodle Incident: A rare semi-onscreen case. One scene in Dr. Baxter's laboratory begins with him and Mrs. Prim irritably attempting to put out a cadaver's hair, which has caught on fire for God knows what reason.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Inverted! Bella doesn't wear corsets at all, despite the Victorian-esque time period, having simply never been taught to. On the other hand, Duncan Wedderburn is shown to wear one (and not in a gender-playful way), and the main effect it has is implying he's suppressing a gut.
• Onscreen Chapter Titles: The story is segmented by surreal interstitials announcing the title of the chapters.
• Parental Incest:
  • Actually inverted by Dr. Baxter, who admits to Max that at first, he would have had sex with Bella if he physically could. Because he can't, however, he developed paternal feelings for her instead, and those come to override his initial inclinations to the point where he snuggles with her the way a parent would with a toddler.
  • Of a sort; Alfie plans to resume marital relations with Bella, who has the body of his wife Victoria and the brain of their daughter (although he doesn't know that part).
• Parental Sexuality Squick: A common theme of Lanthimos' works as a whole.
  • During Bella's time at the Parisian bordello, a father brings his two sons to watch him have sex with Bella, claiming this is for "sexual education". The scene is played as rather uncomfortable for everyone.
  • After Alfie takes Bella back to his mansion, one can assume he intends to have sex with her; he doesn't know that Bella is not, in fact, his ex-wife but rather his own child's brain in his late wife's body.
• Professional Sex Ed: One of Bella's clients at the Parisian brothel is a man who brings his two teenage sons. Played with, in that while they don't have sex with Bella, the sons take scrupulous notes while their father does. One of the sons is highly attentive to what's happening and writes his notes on a paper while the other mostly just stares in horror.
• Rule of Symbolism: After Harry shows her a scene of horrific poverty below them from the balcony of the wealthy restaurant in Alexandria, a deeply upset Bella tries to run down a winding stone stairway to get to the unfortunates below. While Harry manages to catch her halfway and she collapses distraught into his arms, a wide shot shows that a significant chunk of the stairway has collapsed completely, a rather poetic demonstration of how separated the classes really are.
• Scars Are Ugly: Dr. Baxter gently explains to Bella that his patchwork face tends to frighten people, and that's part of why they must always stay in his house. Bella, who is still at the Hulk Speak phase of her development, frowns softly as she touches his face and insists, "God not ugly. God lovely."
• Scenery Porn: There is absolutely beautiful scenery in this movie, all rendered with retro steampunk flair, complete with oddly-colored alien skies.
• Sex God: For all that he's an insufferable, chauvinistic, cowardly cad, Duncan Wedderburn is great in bed. Part of Bella's character development is realizing that no matter how good he is at furious jumping and making happiness for Bella, he's simply not operating on her level and doesn't deserve her time.
• Shout-Out:
  • Dr. Baxter's general look and his resurrecting of Bella through electricity harkens back to several movie adaptations of Frankenstein.
  • The shot of Bella awakening also references Maria-Robot taking Maria's appearance from Metropolis.
  • Duncan dramatically wailing "Bellaaa!" as she stands above him on a balcony is likely a reference to Stanley doing the same for Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.
  • There are also shades of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady as Bella's lack of "proper" social skills can come across as a more extreme version of Eliza Doolittle's.
  • The transition from black-and-white to color evokes The Wizard of Oz since it happens when Bella leaves London for the first time to go on a European trip, almost as if she is entering Oz.
  • At dinner in Lisbon, Duncan discusses a new Oscar Wilde play involving a handbag.
• Slapstick: Felicity is introduced staring blankly ahead as Max attempts to toss her a ball. It smacks her squarely in the face and sends her crumpling to the ground, wailing like an infant.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: At the wedding of Max and Bella, the priest seemingly skips the part about asking if there are any objections to be made to the marriage. Of course, that's exactly when Duncan shows up with Bella's pre-resurrection husband, who reminds everyone present of this rule, then imprisons Bella in his mansion.
• Speed Sex: Bella is surprised that her first client in the brothel lasts all of three thrusts before puttering out.
• Steampunk: The story has a definite Victorian/Steam Age aesthetic, albeit with a very strong, colorful Art Nouveau aspect to it.
• Strict Parents Make Sneaky Kids: Dr. Baxter's overly protective behavior partially fuels Bella's desire to go out of his home and go explore the world.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Zig-zagged. Fitting her status as The Shameless, Bella has absolutely no moral hang-ups about being a prostitute, and is confused when Duncan reacts so violently to the fact. She genuinely enjoys sex, doesn't seem to mind the appearance or personality of anyone she sleeps with (only complaining about the occasional smell), and overall walks away from the experience glad she did it. But she eventually learns that not every prostitute is nearly as pleased with their job (especially her friend and eventual lover Toinette), and that Madame Swiney, despite providing her with a job and occasional praise, is exploiting her. The film posits that prostitution is not essentially immoral, but is another form of capitalist exploitation, since Madame Swiney is running the house in order to pay for the care of her granddaughter.
• Unusual Euphemism: Bella calls sex "furious jumping" even long after she knows what sex is, and orgasms are "happiness". Masturbation, therefore, is "making happiness".
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Dr. Baxter is a posthumous example, as his late father's unethical experiments on him only encouraged him to surpass his dad's scientific achievements.
• Zeerust: Dr. Baxter's heavily retro Sci-Fi Schizo Tech used to bring Bella to life, while the world the story is set in seems more leaning towards a feverish Steampunk.

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