Written by Andreas Babiolakis

I adore Yorgos Lanthimos’ royalist tragicomedy The Favourite. I did upon its release, and I still do. However, I was a bit worried when I considered it the Greek auteur’s best work because it is seemingly his most orthodox project to date. Did I only love it because of its conventions compared to how insane his other feature films are? Now that the title of favourite (pun intended) has been taken by another, I no longer worry about this. The Favourite is Lanthimos exercising within the confinements of normalcy by his standards, sure, and even then it is a vivid fever dream of jealousy and gluttony. His latest — and best — film, Poor Things, has not a single ounce of normality within it. It is as bonkers as anything Lanthimos has directed before, and even still it had me tearing up as much as I was laughing and reeling in shock. There’s no debate at this point: Yorgos Lanthimos is the master of the modern absurdist film, and I can say that with both his tamest and — arguably — his wildest feature films in mind. He can control his craft at both ends of the spectrum of extreme satire.

Lanthimos and writer Tony McNamara (with what is one of the best screenplays of the year) adapt Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name in this homage to Frankenstein, the films of Georges Méliès, and Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour. In the former two examples, we see visionaries aim to bring life to the lifeless, with Dr. Frankenstein reanimating a monster made up of various corpses’ body parts, and Méliès bringing magic to the then-new art of motion pictures to breathe new life into the medium. The novel Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley after she suffered a miscarriage and the death of three of her children at young ages. She was cursing the powers above for forbidding her from being a mother, but also questioned the morality of playing God herself; I wouldn’t say that Méliès was “playing God” with his takes on cinema, but he most certainly was one of the first directors to try and test the limits of motion pictures. Finally, Belle de Jour is a feminist take on promiscuity created by a male director who tried his best to understand how dangerous his own gender, particularly with how they view women as items to possess, own, and conquer.

Combine all three ideas into one Frankensteined being (see what I did there?) and you get Poor Things. Bella Baxter is a reanimated corpse: the combination of a mother who committed suicide, and the brain of her gestating fetus she was carrying when she died. She is revived as a new being by Dr. Godwin Baxter, who is cleverly referred to as “God” for short. Bella stumbles around and blurts out basic sounds because she is now an infant in the body of an adult, and God’s mansion is her playground of discovery. She begins to learn at a rapid pace, quickly developing a voice for herself. Throughout Poor Things, she is the object (and I sadly do mean object) of desire of numerous men; God sees her as his test subject and daughter; budding surgeon Max McCandles views her as a woman who he wants to marry; lawyer Duncan Wedderburn reduces her to a sex toy that he parades around Europe. There are more examples, but to dive into more would prove to be reducing this review into a series of major spoilers, which I do not care to use. Instead, I insist that you take my word for it: Poor Things explores the depravity and possessiveness of men, and Bella is a symbol of both liberation and confinement for the female sex.

*Poor Things* takes the concept of a male-dominant society stifling the freedoms of women to an effectively insane level of ludicrousness.

The entire film feels like a modern Méliès wonderland over one hundred years after the master’s reign, with fantastical vehicles, gorgeous skies, and miniature-esque architecture rendering this dreamscape a clear work of fiction. We are left wondering about the world that’s out there that we, as Bella’s eyes, can explore, only to be disappointed with how often Poor Things confines us to the stories and ambitions of the thirsty men around her. That’s kind of the point. I haven’t read Gray’s novel, but I can only wonder who the title refers to. Is it sympathetic to women and how often they are held back by the hidden motives of males? Or is it pretending to console the pathetic self-pity of men who chase after women because they can’t accept “no” as an answer? Either way, a story is being told here. If anyone is ready to jump down my throat or condemn the film for being “anti-man”, there are enough examples of men here that pertain to your cries of “Not all men!!!!!”, and you are also missing the point of the film. Poor Things has a woman who died because she couldn’t take this world anymore, being forced back into life by a man proclaiming himself to be God, instantly being guided on how to speak, think, and be, and then being tugged in two different directions (that of an ideal wife, and that of an erotic fantasy).

We instantly root for Bella’s autonomy and independence. As she begins an adventure of discovery of self, sex, philosophy, and free thought, all of the crazy, cartoonish world around her feels more of a contrast to her experience (despite how kooky Bella herself can be). There’s a civilization pretending to be more advanced than Bella, and yet it is she who instantly comes out on top as a breakthrough of brilliance. She is played extraordinarily by Emma Stone who reduces her movements and speech patterns to a state of primitiveness. Stone tenses her muscles even as she merely stands to create Bella’s stiffness as she adjusts to a world she is unfamiliar with; even when Bella talks fluently, she has her own way of talking thanks to Stone’s invention of Bella’s mannerisms. We’ve seen similar characters before, but Stone has made Bella a breath of fresh air with what may be the finest performance of 2023. She is hilarious, charming, and — most of all, regarding a character who is a corpse brought back to life and forced to relearn all of the ways of the world — highly believable.

She is matched by a slew of likeable supporting performances that persevere in their own ways. Willem Dafoe is “God”, and he is gruff yet inspired with his practices. It’s hard to not scorn his initial attempts of being a dad and, well, “God”, but by the end of Poor Things, my heart did break for him a little bit when — compared to how detestable many of the men were in this film — God didn’t seem so bad. Bella still deviated away from him only to recall his importance in her life: a religious allegory that a Greek filmmaker like Lanthimos makes apparent within a world that is distancing away from organized religion (as they say, there are no atheists in foxholes). Next, there’s Mark Ruffalo as the snivelling simp Duncan, whose accent is so thick and clunky that it wouldn’t work in any other film. Fortunately, this is Poor Things, and Duncan is a caricature of slimy male cretins everywhere and his detestability is our humour. Toss in Ramy Youssef as Max (one of the only men here that doesn’t come off as instantly problematic, outside of maybe Jerrod Carmichael’s Harry Astley), and you have a tether point that grounds Poor Things enough to allow the wild imagination of Lanthimos to feel all the more alive and unreal.

Emma Stone delivers what may be the best performance of 2023 as Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos’ exquisitely bonkers film *Poor Things*.

The aesthetics and design of Poor Things match the outlandishness of these performances. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography is even more anarchistic than what he pulled off in The Favourite, with fish-eyed lenses, extreme-close-ups, natural lighting in green-screen environments (I can’t exactly wrap my head around this either), and other extremities that will be a feast for your eyes; with all of this in mind, not once did I feel like Poor Things was trying too hard, and there’s somehow a nice balance between technical splendour and embellished visuals that even out a film that could have been both too much or too little. The first act of Poor Things is banished to a shadowy greyscale as Bella is introduced to the world with new eyes; the definitive point where Poor Things becomes a fully colourful film is a hysterically chosen moment that speaks volumes in its own way (I won’t ruin the surprise). Between the costumes, makeup, and sets, everything else can be explained in the same way: equal parts well-made and out-there. Jerskin Fendrix’s score also fits under this description, as the sparse-yet-jarring instrumentation feels much like Bella herself: incomplete, trying to piece together abstract thoughts into proper sentiments, and, finally, a complete entity that conveys full thoughts. Both the score and Bella floor us once they can properly communicate with us and we get the assembled, bigger picture of fascination, pain, loneliness, and discovery.

Watching Bella slowly develop her own identity, series of thoughts, and perseverance has been one of the great joys of 2023 cinema. You see her develop her own voice, find her identity, and become so much more than an attribute for another person. Poor Things had me howling with laughter quite often because of Lanthimos’ signature style of elite vulgarity and alarming abstractness conveyed as satire. The director welcomes amalgamations of genre, ideas, and life itself (if the final shot is any indication of such a celebration). What is normalcy, anyway? Is it what we’ve been told it is for decades? Is it the same suffocating information that has held back many movements, industries, and art forms because the creators of old don’t want a world where they become redundant? Nonetheless, Lanthimos never stopped dreaming. He could have settled after he broke ground with his Greek dark comedy Dogtooth, after The Lobster won over new audiences, or even after The Favourite became an awards season darling all the way up to the Oscars. Nope. Instead, he continues to go as far as he possibly can. Despite the nudity, vulgarity, gore, and horrifying imagery, not once do I feel like Lanthimos is trying too hard. Poor Things is as genuine as such a tale can be from these perverse thoughts. Lanthimos aims to take us further during a time when film is being told it has gone as far as it possibly can.

Even by Lanthimos’ standards, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film quite like Poor Things. It is as forward-thinking as it is a tribute to the ways of Méliès silent cinema (especially its starting sequences before we hear our first words). It has so much humanity amidst its myriad of surreal, ludicrous images and concepts; a film where duck-dogs run around and Dr. God burps up bubbles also had me teary-eyed a few times. What a visionary Yorgos Lanthimos is. I’d call 2023 the best year of film this new 2020s decade so far without there even being a possibility of debate, and even so, Poor Things sits above many other qualified, terrific releases. Call this film and its director weird all you want. This film rejuvenated my curiosity for film just a little bit more than when I started watching it. I’ve seen likely ten thousand films in my lifetime, so it can seem easy for the medium to occasionally feel stale. Poor Things is a reminder that you can still feel something new even well over a hundred years into the history of film.

Be this a film of my dreams or my nightmares, Poor Things is of a different dimension entirely, and yet it understands the sexist imbalance of our own reality quite strongly. Whether you view Poor Things as an argument in favour of feminist individuality, a hyperbolic cartoon of society and life, a modernization of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, or a celebration of film’s past, present, and future, you will find great value in a film that seems like it would be hostile and unfriendly. Poor Things is a lovingly paradoxical film: a work that is as extreme as it is poised, that mocks as much as it consoles, and an extension of fiction as much as it is an accurate mirror of our world. It is easy to get lost in this film, but you’ll find yourself planted right back in this divided, tempered society as if you had never left. The world has a lot of fixing to do, and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things feels as cobbled as it is assured: it is imperfect by design, but at least it is an attempt to rectify the damage that has been done. I wanted to get stuck in Poor Things forever until I was reminded what it was truly about: a woman not being allowed to be just a woman or herself. Once the credits for Poor Things began, I was happy to find resolution in what is truly a tragic circumstance; considering that even the end credits are hypnotic, I got my wish of staying in the world of Poor Things just a little longer while Bella’s tale was finally put to much-needed rest. My God. What a film.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.