POOR THINGS : Tuesday 26th December 2023.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'POOR THINGS' at my local independent movie theatre this week, and this black comedy fantasy film is Co-Produced and Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos whose prior feature film offerings take in his debut in 2001 with 'My Best Friend' and which he would follow up with 'Dogtooth' in 2009, and then his first English language film 'The Lobster' in 2015, 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' in 2017 and 'The Favourite' in 2018. This film is based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray. The film saw its World Premiere showcasing at the Venice International Film Festival in early September this year where it won the Golden Lion. It was released Stateside earlier this month and is scheduled to be released in the UK on 12th January, having so far grossed US$6M against a production budget of US$35M and garnering universal critical acclaim.

The film opens up in London, Victorian era England where scientist and surgeon Dr. Godwin 'God' Baxter (Willem Dafoe) is performing surgery on a cadaver to an audience of students, who under their breath deride his monstrous appearance. One such student, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) is singled out to become his assistant on the strength of a paper he wrote which grabbed the attention of Baxter. McCandles is welcomed to the grand home of Baxter where he meets with the Doctor's maid Mrs. Prim (Vicki Pepperdine). McCandles is tasked with recording the progress made by Baxter's ward - a childlike young woman named Bella (Emma Stone, who also Co-Produces here), whose intelligence is rapidly developing almost by the day. 

In time, Baxter tells McCandles that the woman who was heavily pregnant at the time, had committed suicide by throwing herself off a bridge into the River Thames, and that she had died only moments before he retrieved the body and that rigour mortis had not yet set in. He resurrected her lifeless corpse by replacing her brain with the brain of her still-living baby, resulting in her now having the mind of an infant child. 

With Baxter's blessing, McCandles asks for Bella's hand in marriage, on the condition that that the pair never leave the house, because of the bad influences, dangers and violence that exists in the world outside the security of their own home. Bella accepts but, desiring freedom to explore the world and experience adventures in her own right as her mind matures, runs off with foppish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) who was brought in by Baxter to execute a marriage contract, and who became infatuated with Bella upon their first meeting. Reluctantly Baxter agrees to let Bella go. Godwin starts a new experiment with a young woman named Felicity (Margaret Qualley), whose intelligence is developing at a much slower pace than Bella's did.

So Bella and Wedderburn embark on a grand adventure, starting in Lisbon, Portugal where the two have frequent sex. Bella becomes difficult for Duncan to control as she is not yet mature enough to engage in polite social etiquette and just speaks her mind on a whim. So he smuggles her onto a cruise ship for a change of scenery. Once on board, she becomes friendly with passengers Martha (Hannah Schygulla) and Harry (Jerrod Carmichael) who open her mind to philosophy. Wedderburn becomes increasingly exasperated and begins drinking more heavily and gambling. 

During a stop at Alexandria, Egypt, where Harry and Bella are enjoying a lavish lunch, Harry shows Bella the miserable plight of the locals, the abject poverty in which they live and the resultant death of numerous young children and babies, at which Bella becomes distraught and sobs uncontrollably. Returning to her cabin she finds Wedderburn passed out on their bed in a drunken stupor covered in cash from his gambling winnings. Wracked with guilt over the poverty she witnessed she collects up all the cash and donates away the winnings, which are in turn stolen by a couple of opportunistic crew members whom Bella believed she could trust to do the right thing and pass on the cash to the people who desperately needed it the most.

Unable to afford the remaining trip, the pair are kicked off the ship at Marseille, France after which they make their way to Paris. Having run out of money, Bella begins working at a brothel clearing twenty French francs per client, which only serves to further enrage Wedderburn resulting in his mental breakdown, and which finally leads her to abandon him. At the brothel, she comes under the tutelage of Madame Swiney (Kathryn Hunter), has no shortage of clients and befriends fellow prostitute Toinette, (Suzy Bemba) who introduces her to socialism.

Meanwhile, back in London, Baxter is terminally ill. He asks McCandles to locate Bella and to return her to him. McCandles does so after tracking down Wedderburn, who has been confined to an institution following his breakdown. Upon her return to London, Bella reconciles with Baxter and renews her vows with McCandles. The two are interrupted by Wedderburn and General Alfie Blessington (Christopher Abbott) at the alter on their wedding day, at which Baxter is giving away Bella. 

Blessington, who calls Bella by her former name of Victoria, reveals that they were married before her disappearance and that he has come to reclaim her after Wedderburn posted an ad with a picture of Bella in the newspaper. Bella abandons Max at the alter before exchanging their vows to learn of her past life. She quickly comes to the realisation that her former husband has a violent and sadistic streak and that she had in fact committed suicide to escape their unhappy marriage and to save her unborn child from a life of misery. He basically imprisons Bella to the confines of his mansion and threatens her at gunpoint to submit to genital mutilation after which he will plant his seed inside her, and demands she drink a chloroform-laced cocktail to sedate her for the procedure. She tosses the cocktail in his face, causing him to shoot himself in the foot before succumbing to the chloroform. 

Baxter dies peacefully with Bella and McCandles at his side, with his final words being that his surgery is now hers and that his life has been interesting. Bella decides to carry on Baxters work with the help of McCandles, Toinette and Mrs. Prim. Blessington is seen on the operating table where his brain is swapped with that of a goat, while Felicity's intelligence is finally improving. Bella is seen in the garden of her London home with a cocktail in one hand and studying from a book for her final medical exams. 

For me 'Poor Things' failed to land in the same way that it does with the majority of other critics who have given the film its almost universal blessing. That said, you can't help but admire Director Yorgos Lanthimos and his creation of a steampunk bizarro world of OTT characters, locales and emotions writ large mostly by a never been better and a career defining performance by Emma Stone, an equally far removed from his usual roles Mark Ruffalo, and the always dependable Willem Dafoe channeling Doctor Frankenstein. The production values and costume designs are all top notch and look as though Lanthimos squeezed out very cent from his US$35M production budget to bring us a film that looks greater than the sum of its parts. However, this film is hard to pigeon hole, and at a run time of 141 minutes and a film that feels more like an absurdist sex comedy than an intellectual coming of age fantasy drama I couldn't help but feel just a little meh! after all the explicit sex scenes and the vividly rendered set pieces.

'Poor Things' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-