Poor Things (2023)

I've wanted to see this since I caught a few clips at the Academy Awards. My desire decreased when I learned that Yorgos Lanthimos directed. Nonetheless, almost as soon as it came to Netflix, I obliged.

In 19th-century London, heavily pregnant Victoria Blessington (Emma Stone) commits suicide. Victor Frankenstein-like Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) could simply revive her, but seeing little sense in bringing back a suicidal mind, he transplants her baby's brain into her head first. When he asks med student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to help document the behavior of this "Bella Baxter," she can barely talk or balance, but she's learning fast. Eventually, Godwin talks Max into proposing to Bella. She accepts, but since Godwin would still require her to stay on his property all the time, she first runs off on an adventure with Europe-traveling lothario Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Neither she nor Duncan knows what they're getting into.

Early on, I got the impression that Max was the protagonist. Instead, we barely see him in the second act, when Bella's away and he and Godwin repeat the experiment with "Felicity" (Margaret Qualley). That poor thing doesn't even rate a mention in the Wikipedia summary.

Ugh, Lanthimos sure likes having men unlawfully restrain women. And once again, I don't find much amusing in this "comedy." At least I can tell the humor is there, mostly in the form of Bella's ignorance, especially of social norms, surprising other characters (who oddly don't express confusion at her calling Godwin "God"). She does have a more scientific bent than most and can be highly compassionate, hence the title. By the end, you'd scarcely know she was mentally younger than she looked.

I do take interest in the concept of Bella being both herself and Victoria after a fashion, a fact she doesn't know until the third act. I'm much less intrigued by the combination of little girl naivety and adult libido, leading to plenty of graphic sex that shouldn't be legal. Are Max and Duncan that smitten by beauty alone, or do they have darker urges? I'd sooner want to seduce an adult in a child's body, tho that would be more problematic on camera.

Of course, the plot wasn't what drew me to watch in the first place; the artistry was. While the first act is in black and white apart from some flashbacks (the opposite of the usual formula), vibrant colors make the picture a lot more watchable, even when in the service of ugliness. We also get some fisheye shots just to enhance the quirkiness, with more agreeable music than in The Favourite. Godwin keeps a lot of stitched-together hybrids around with no importance to the plot, and the rest of Europe occasionally presents a little sci-fi flavor, as with overhead trams in Lisbon.

This may well be the best from Lanthimos, but that's not saying much in my book. I won't bother trying him again unless he promises something very different. After all, that's how Denis Villeneuve won me over.