Review: Poor Things (Patreon)

Recently I got dumped by a man who was a bit too fond of Duncan Wedderman. I may unfairly resent Poor Things for this. Bella Baxter is like many of us in that she makes terrible decisions about men, but why did her terrible decisions have to come onto my radar?

The terribleness of men aside, Poor Things works nicely. It’s not quite the movie I would have liked to see less of the “Bella learns how to be human” stuff in the back half, which lost me pretty aggressively. And for all that Mark Ruffalo is a scene stealer, I got pretty tired of Duncan Wedderburn by the end. Bella’s queerness is also insufficiently explored — it’s in there just enough to be meaningful, but given Bella’s general apathy about human norms, it’s a little frustrating that she defaults to heteronormativity for most of the movie. If it weren’t for the final scene, with the weird transhumanist polycule, this would be a more mixed review.

But the last scene does exist, and it pays off Poor Things’ best ideas brilliantly. This is  horny steampunk Frankenstein by the guy who directed The Favourite. Something would have to go dreadfully wrong for this movie — or any remake of Frankenstein Created Woman — not to be fun. Everybody involved is doing career-best work: Emma Stone gives a tactile, mercurial performance that would upstage Buster Keaton, Yorgos Lanthimos is shooting the kind of movie Karel Zeman probably wished he could make, and Mark Ruffalo… well, you read the first paragraph of this review.

Perhaps one of the things I most appreciated about the Frankenstein riff (aside from the slight resemblance to Frankenstein Created Woman, Hammer’s best movie) is the particular treatment of, if not alchemy, the transformation of substance. Bella is a transbstantiated figure. She’s Frankenstein’s monster freeing itself from the shackles of Victorian social strictures. My nitpicks are fairly insignificant in the face of that. And when did the Academy last nominate such a horny movie for Best Picture?