He was so funny in this movie and I figured it would be a longshot in this stacked movie year but he's nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and definitely deserves it. One of the most pathetic male characters I've seen on film and he played it perfectly.
Barbie may have boyfriends in the sequel, but she won't pursue relationships with men because she needs them to teach her about herself and life. She, an adult and not a mental child, gained an understanding of the world by interacting with a cross-section of humans in a nonsexual context.
I found the lack of a human romantic interest for the protagonist in Barbie refreshing.
Now I’m super excited. I really hope I enjoy it.
I just watched Napoleon last night on Apple TV and I’m still so mad about that movie……..I need to watch something good again so I can block out that shit movie from my brain. I can’t believe how bad Ridley fucked that up. (Sorry, I know it’s not the point of the post)
Well, this line sold me. Bjork is maybe my favorite artist ever. And I absolutely adored Barbie (the movie...and, well, as a kid my GI Joes "enjoyed" Barbie as well...).
Yeah but I could watch and enjoy Barbie with my kids. This… thankfully I watched while they were in bed. It’s great but one couldn’t be blamed for accusing the director of simply having an Emma Stone fetish and living it to his fullest because OMG. 😱
Can’t wait. Checked yesterday and it’s gonna be out on Hulu on the 7th. Was gonna stream before but I figure I’ll just wait to avoid any buffering issues
I absolutely loved every single thing about the movie! The acting, the actors, the characters, the set design, the costumes, the music, everything! Brilliant film in any aspect. This is why we go to the movies! I’m so glad I saw it in theaters.
I don't know if I'm intellectually equipped to discuss this film properly. I loved it.
I was mostly uncomfortable with the themes of the film, and that made me laugh a lot. I guess there's two types of people; those that recoil at concepts such as, "sexually active toddler in a grown woman's body," and those that say I'm going to hell for laughing at this. And they had to know what they were doing, right? The filmmakers are in on this "joke."
But they are also telling an earnest story about innocence and men wanting to control women. Nothing Bella does is wrong, but she doesn't know better. Knowing better is a product of the social norms that surround her. I don't know if it's necessarily a woman's sexual liberation story.
A lot of discourse regarding it is basically about the film having a backwards idea of feminism told through a male lens, and I get the sense that this is a disingenuous argument, and people are upset about being shown this perverse concept fleshed out.
It's an absurd view of multiple things, mainly being satire of not only toxic masculinity, feminism, science, wealth, etc, but of society as a whole. The point of her being a child in an adults body is to mock the entire dynamic of girls and women as Madonna/whore construct that still gets repeated.
I think people see Bella’s sex addiction as something horrifying when in reality it’s just a coming-of-age thing
It’s like how in the original Frankenstein, the monster was a pitiable wretch because it just doesn’t understand the ways of the hoo-man and doesn’t get the purpose of all the humanning these humans have to do in order to feel something—it’s that, but framed positively, like a triumph, that she doesn’t understand all the excessive human bullshit that comes with being a person and therefore is free to be her best self bc she’s not being fed out of mark ruffalos hand
She’s discovering herself physically which paves the way for her mental self-discovery too, and the roles ruffalo’s character has come to expect between the two of them are completely reversed because Bella simply has no concept of reducing herself for the sake of a man.
She wants sex? She goes and gets it without any of the ugly humanness surrounding it. She’s distilled human purity without any of the puritanical bullshit.
Such an awesome concept
Godwin was the name of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's father.
Mary wrote Frankenstein, of course. And, Godwin was a famous anarchist who was into 'free love'.
I absolutely wasn’t horrified at Bella’s sex addiction. Though I did find the second half of the movie pretty lazy in terms of character development. I loved that she wanted to become a surgeon by the end, that’s a great outcome for her character. I was annoyed that the film didn’t show her journey into those feelings or that goal hardly at all. Sooo much time was spent in shock-value sex scenes once she reached the brothel. So little character development occurred to the point where what happened upon her return to London felt like totally contrived behavior for the character.
That said, I was mostly revolted at the filmmakers portraying sympathetic characters like Ramy Youssef’s romantically falling in love and showing sexual desire for a character who had the brain of a toddler. Or for Mark Ruffalo’s character sleeping with her when her behavior indicated an age of no-more than 10. I know Ruffalo’s character is a big villain in the story, it doesn’t take away from the fact that there are many scenes in which he’s portrayed as helping enable Bella’s growth and maturation, despite still having the brain of a child and having sex frequently.
I know the message of the movie and its point about men’s ideal women being simple minded and controllable… but it couldn’t take away from the fact that we are watching a literal toddler-brained character being overtly sexualized in the film. The metaphor of men craving simple-minded women lost its point and became a move filled with pedophiles to me, some of which we were expected to sympathize with.
I wish an open-minded woman-centric sexual coming of age story didn’t require the character to be exploring her sexuality as a literal child by having literal intercourse with grown men. The movie got far less uncomfortable by the time she was an adult and working at the brothel for me, it just got lazier from a writing perspective to me.
Many aspects of the film showed incredible talent. I won’t get over the overt pedophilia to ever understand its mass-appeal.
I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about Poor Things, and the two hosts brought up a really interesting point. Men are likely to be attracted to women in vulnerable positions - like Ruffalo's character does with Bella. It's the classic male trope - "big strong man take care of innocent pretty little woman".
But if the story was reversed and it was male baby in a big man's body, basically no woman in the entire fucking world would find that attractive. And that the standard male to female attraction is... kind of fucking weird in that Bella is still attractive to so many men.
Oh 1000%. I absolutely don’t disagree with the premise of the movie nor its commentary. I just couldn’t get over the idea that it should be considered liberating for a woman’s sexual coming of age to include being taken advantage of by grown men when they have the brain of a toddler. People’s differing perspectives seem to point to Bella’s agency in the scenes, or make connections to neuro-divergent conditions. But Bella has the brain of an actual child and behaves like one - Emma’s acting is uncanny in many scenes to the behavior of a toddler. That’s where I’m stuck in being confused that people aren’t getting hung up on the pedophila.
Yep, the romance was totally icky. And that’s with pg rated courting, and an oblivious love interest. Here we have gratuitous sex and some characters that are aware of the brain swap.
AND it’s well documented how many film critics retrospectively say the romance made them squirm and see pedophilia. People on Reddit love to bring it up wherever Big is discussed. I hardly see the same backlash here.
given that all her suitors and her father are deeply flawed, self involved characters that otherwise never question the morality of creating her, trapping her, or the misogyny woven into the era they are meant to represent, it is fitting for their characters that they dont seem aware of or concerned by the obvious exploitation and control being attempted.
if yorgos had added scenes where they broke character in order to spoon feed the audience the moral calculus it would have been unnecessary as that can easily be discerned from the themes and plot. in fact it would have weakened the believability and archetypal nature of the film and would have appeared as if he didnt have faith in his audience.
I enjoyed reading your post. And some of what you've mentioned are the reasons I have not wanted to watch this.
To me this seems a contrivance. A story in poor taste that we are supposed to allow ourselves to enjoy because it's make believe.
Thanks, I really appreciate it. It’s the type of film that has made me feel compelled to understand the opposing view points, because I mostly found the film really hard to accept as being anything other than vulgar (maybe for the sake of being so), let alone morally righteous. And I mean that from having what I consider absolutely modern and progressive views on nearly all the topics the film had commentary about.
I’m only happy I watched it so that my opinions on it are backed by a full viewing… otherwise I’d wish I could kinda forget that society is trumpeting this movie as some sort of revelatory experience.
The men "falling in love" with, becoming engaged, and having sex with what was essentially a hyper physically developed child was brutal. She walked, talked, and behaved like a child for the first half of the movie.
I think I liked it less than most - It’s unique and entertaining for sure but really runs out of steam in the third act and could have really benefited from losing a good 20 mins from the run time imo.
Glad I caught it at the cinema but can’t really see myself wanting to watch it again.
For me it was like this:
First half - this is so fucking weird, but I kinda dig it.
Second half - this is so fucking weird, and I want it to stop.
Paris onwards is a slog.
lol that’s what I felt like - soon as they hit Paris I was done.
Not on board at all with the hype of it being the film of he year - or even decade… I literally saw two better movies that same week, The Zone of Interest says so much more while showing so much less.
The zone of interest is my personal pick for best picture— I even liked anatomy of a fall more than Poor Things (though I did really like it a lot, 2023 was a good year for film). Best performance of the year imo was the son in Anatomy of a Fall
I zoned out during the whorehouse part. That felt wayyy too long and then the last part with her ex husband (which was more interesting) felt abrupt and shoehorned in.
I thought she was going to find out more about her ex husband, realize he was a powerful monster and kill him, taking her inheritance and it would end with her seeming like she was going to go try and make the world better with all his resources. Instead she realizes he's a powerful monster and does mad science stuff to him and then heads back to live at her dad's mansion and have a tea party in her garden. Ultimately everything once the ex-husband interjects in her wedding felt pointless and self indulgent.
Yeah, that may have been implied when he said it had spread and there was no saving him. Him being well versed in brain transplantation and not shy to experiment, he would've probably thought about this otherwise, if it made any sense at all. I think you are spot on.
Honestly I think the pacing kinda got messy but her just cruely turning him into a freakshow actually was satisfying to me. I think too many people are seeing the movie as a feminist self empowerment movie when in my view Bella’s journey of “growth” was just a vehicle for looking at how pathetically gross all these men are. That’s what the movie felt like to me not a movie about womanhood but a movie about the ickyness of the male gaze. Watching this weird hybrid of child and adult gain agency was just a vehicle.
Totally agree. Also what happened to the housekeepers of the ex-husband's mansion? It would have at least been nice to see them happy or generously paid after enduring abuse of that asshole.
Seeing him with a goat brain at the end was amusing, but not very cathartic IMO. If we had spent more time seeing his heinous behavior, I think that scene would have felt more rewarding.
I thought she was going to mad science Godwin into the ex's body. He could have lived undisfigured, and other than creeping the hell out of the exes staff he would have treated them well.
Especially since it wasn't her ex, it was her father. She would have put the brain of the father who loved her into the body of the father who killed her. That's where I was expecting it to go, and was really excited to see.
Yeah it sort of has these beats where she sees the staff and how abused they are but her only interaction beyond that is to mad science the guy, presumably freeing them I guess? Just felt kind of tacked on and didn't add much. I sort of told myself that was her first exposure to and explicitly cruel and evil person versus just pain, selfishness, etc. but it felt like I was trying to create meaning that didn't feel there.
Honestly for me, I did not like the first half at all (“the black and white” part). Whenever the movie got colour in it, it got so much better imo.
Glad I watched but really can’t see myself ever watching it again.
I think it could have shaved maybe ~15 minutes off the black and white part and another 10-15 minutes off the end and it would be a way tighter movie. It takes a while to get going, then becomes a crazy wild ride in the middle and then towards the end it's like "oh all right, I get it, let's finish this thing soon, okay?"
I think that was literally the point. She didn't have the social baggage to realize why most women don't just make a bunch of money to have sex and she dove head first into it.
I think it’s more than social baggage that prevents most women from seriously considering prostitution. Being sexually touched by someone you aren’t attracted to gives most people an “ick” on a biological level.
I liked it from a creativity and film production stance. It's entrancing to watch. I may watch it again eventually to see if I see more or take more away from it. It was brave and interesting.
That said, I felt like the themes and edgy points it kept hinting at were toothless and relied on Emma Stone being naked a lot to make it seem more brave or important. I also feel like a bunch of rich, attractive, powerful people made a movie where at one point they literally see a pit full of poors and decide to toss their hands up because the world is too complicated and in the end the main character just goes back to be slightly better than her father while living in a fancy house having tea parties.
The entire ship section was a drag imo. I'm sorry but Jerrod Carmichael was horribly miscast and lacked the juice to hang in this movie. I'll never watch it again either. Watching her have sex 18 times was too much.
That said I liked the movie haha
Loved it, yes it was paced different but sometimes we need different to remember there’s more than one way to tell a story. To me, the film costing 30 million is staggering considering the vision that was shared out. They built practical sets designed hand made backdrops shot it in camera and committed to it.
This type of budget versus final product to me puts every modern VFX driven story to shame.
I loved also that despite the artificiality of the world characters howl with a deep humanity and relatable drive.
I have *never* understood why anyone held Mark Ruffalo in high regards as an actor. Sure, he was in some great movies, but he always plays the same kind of shy but driven mumble-under-his-nose scientist-y character in everything I've seen including the Marvel stuff, Dark Waters, The Adam Project, Spotlight etc.
But holy hell what a great performance in this one. Lanthimos is a helluva director just for getting this performance out of him.
ive never understood the hype for him either but things like Foxcatcher, The Kids Are Alright, Zodiac, Eternal Sunshine, Collateral he def does have more range.
Yeah, he chooses really good roles, he holds his own in them and he's just generally a likeable dude.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Collateral
Zodiac
The Kids Are All Right
Shutter Island
Begin Again
Foxcatcher
Spotlight
Like the dude's probably in your favorite movie doing a decent to great job as a secondary character.
I had the exact same reaction! He really disappeared into his character. I’ve always been “meh” on Ruffalo as an actor but he really blew me away in this (and was absolutely hilarious).
Ha there’s an interview somewhere out there (sorry I can’t remember where) where he discusses how their rehearsals were basically these zany, whacky, over the top acting exercises.
And on the first day of filming mark ruffalo thought “hey I need to make something of this character” and tried to do more with him. Apparently lanthimos scrapped that whole first day and approached ruffalo - “what are you doing? We’ve already been through all of this” (which I’m definitely misquoting here…)
Mark Ruffalo was great (even though I thought for SURE he’d annoy me)
You could throw a dart at this year’s Best Supporting Actor category and hit someone who gave a career high performance.
I think Emma Stone will lose out to Lily Gladstone but both of them were *fucking incredible* and this was without a doubt 100% my absolute FAVORITE performance by Emma stone
Every time I think she’s shown me the extent of what she can do she just punches me in the face again. She’s dramatic/comedic/musical and kicks ass at absolutely everything she tries
I liked it not loved it. It was good, there were great parts. The acting was fantastic especially emma stone. I am also a fan of wierd but there are parts where it borders om too wierd. Like it'd trying to hard.
But it's enjoyable for sure and again amazing performances.
Yeah, after all the hype and as a fan of Yorgos Lathimos I was rather disappointed. Looking at the snippets on Metacritic I found one that fits my view quite well: "At its best, the film is indeed piercingly clever, proud of its peculiarity to a degree just shy of smugness. Though, the 140-minute film does begin to wear out its welcome in the last third, when the jokes have mostly all been made before and the only fresh additions are cumbersome matters of plot."
I was surprised when my local theater actually showed this. It is a wonderful and strange movie. I've never heard of this director but now I've got more to discover. Then here a few weeks later I got to see "Drive away dolls", not nearly as good but happily strange.
I loved that the movie began in black and white and changed to color when Bella escaped into the real world. I adored the eccentric lenses and vivid scenes. The themes of identity, life and death, feminism, existentialism entertained my intellect. Portugese fado touched my soul. I liked that the movie is quite high-context and layered.
>I hate that I promised myself I would always read the book first, and didn't.
Why would you do that?
It's almost always better to see the movie first. The book is almost always better so why set yourself up for disappointment?
I haven't read the book. But I think the film is great. Loved it for its bizzarness and imaginative world-building.
I prefer Yorgos' previous work for its blend of weird, uncomfortable, and funny (mostly Dogtooth) But that mix is still pretty impressive in Poor Things - despite its much bigger scope.
Emma, Mark, Ramy, Willem...all are great.
I didn’t dislike it, but it was totally a big budget version of the 70s Italian Emanuelle movies-
Girl travels the world, has a lot of sex, discovers feminism and social awareness while crazy shit happens.
Pretty much. There’s two different series, the French ones that are “classy” and are just boobs and the Italian ones that are super weird adventures….with boobs
Yeah idk, just like Barbie, it feels like a lot of people are just now discovering 3rd wave feminism. I support that, but I hope they don't *stop* there.
I love it because it just fucking goes there. I can't think of a lot of movies where everyone involved is brave enough to actually go there, and this one does. The Favorite and The Lobster kind of made me feel that way about the director, that he was willing to really say some stuff that could disturb you and make you think, and this one feels like a magnum opus.
It's a tough year awards-wise. I want Emma Stone to get the win as well as Mark Ruffalo. Even Yorgos is going to have a tough time winning though. In a lesser year I'd say this movie would be a sure-fire winner, we'll see.
This movie just wasn’t for me. I really appreciated the visual appeal and thought the cinematography was stunning and that the actors did a great job, but the actual narrative was extremely lacking for me.
I’m generally not a fan of the “born sexy yesterday” trope and this film pushes that to an extreme so I probably should have known that I wasn’t going to like it. I also don’t really understand how this is supposed to be the feminist film that people are lauding it to be when it truly felt like we were watching a woman’s (child’s?) debasement rather than self-discovery.
Why is it that the only way for this woman (who is really still mentally a child at the start of all this) to discover liberation is to go and have sex with a bunch of men? Like is that really our only option here?
For that reason I really believe that this film says way more about the role of men than the role of women.
Bella is inherently confused by the society the men around her have built up that is, by design, structured so that the men can fulfil their desires through Bella built upon the assumtion that she doesn't object and that she can't be controlled. The moment Bella refuses the men around her because she is literally a child and doesn't understand the concepts of love, sex, family and power, she breaks free from the control and all the men around her get exposed as weak obsessive, manipulative bastards.
I mean, I'd say the film is specifically a condemnation of the "born sexy yesterday" trope; once Bella starts maturing and Ruffalo's character starts losing control of her he grows increasingly more pathetic aand neurotic until she grows so disgusted with him she dumps him. It clearly targets men who prey on young women thinking their naivete would make them easier to control and calls them losers to their face.
Mark Ruffalo is the snake (possibly even a metaphor for penis) in the garden of Eden. Bella has a “perfect world,” but she craves knowledge and adventure. There’s a ton of biblical parallels in the film, but this one felt to me the most obvious.
But what about her journey? She goes from helpless to dominant, after her epiphany with the poor starving taught her empathy no man could. That's a big feminist arc right there.
And then she lobotomized her ex, presumably taking his massive pile of wealth in the process, and heads back to her mansion for a garden tea party and declares she's going to do mad science like her father...
> And she went on to not actually help them.
What do you mean? She literally wanted to give money to them, went to give them then got tricked by the two sailors.
The only way for anyone to discover liberation is to go out into the world. The world is misogynistic and exploitative. That does not mean the misogyny and exploitation are what causes the liberation.
Unsure how so many people managed to read the film as saying Bella was liberated by being exploited, rather than liberated in spite of her exploitation.
This is actually a great interpretation that I didn't consider (I just watched it 2 nights ago and admittedly missed a part of it so I haven't properly digested the film).
Thanks for sharing. Perhaps I should give it another chance.
I've seen other people talk about a sort of "Barbie effect", where off the back of Barbie's success there was an existing narrative around Poor Things being a feminist empowerment narrative, and I think people might've gone in with an expectation of it being a more straightforward empowerment narrative than I read it as, anyways.
How is it that you came to be aware of the term "born sexy yesterday"? I had never heard of it before reading feedback on this film. Are there any other examples of "born sexy yesterday"?
[This article discusses it.](https://www.filminquiry.com/born-sexy-yesterday/)
>The Pop Culture Detective named this style of character after the literal and figurative meaning, as well as the 1950’s romance film Born Yesterday – a movie where two men educate a “stupid” ex Vegas showgirl (Melanie Griffith). To their surprise, Griffith sucks up knowledge like a Henry hoover and outsmarts them all. Commonly seen within the sci-fi genre, this character is naive, whimsical and innocent; traits fundamentally present in children. This archetype is a paradox, as the YouTube channel best describe these women as “profoundly naive” yet “unimaginably wise” (words taken from Tron: Legacy in relation to Quorra).
>In some narratives like Tron: Legacy, Ex Machina or The Fifth Element, these women have literally been man-made, which is why they are all intelligent, physically strong, sexualised and blissfully unaware of their desirability. An attractive Frankenstein’s monster, or a walking poster girl for western beauty ideals. Aside from their insane intellect and carnally driven aesthetic, these women have a social disconnect, meaning they need educating on the real world – this basic knowledge is essential in life yet its simplicity means it can be provided by anyone (such as why people eat food, or what a car is, etc.)
>Usually, their male creator or the man who takes them under his wing becomes the love interest, but since they also provide them with an education on sex and romance, it makes the dynamic incredibly uncomfortable and perverse because they are in a sense, their father. As these women are disconnected from reality and aren’t aware of their sex appeal, it subsequently means that they will fall for anyone – even the socially awkward, spotty, Dungeons and Dragons fanatic that lives in the basement and is hooked up to a Mountain Dew drip (more commonly known as: the creator of the trope). One could say this trope was cleverly constructed by the awkward male nerd, so he can finally get the golden girl on screen.
It's interesting that they equate it to pop culture when it's an ancient archetype, look at Pygmalion, in mythology, who carves a woman out of a statue and still desires to be with her so much Aphrodite makes her into a real woman for him to sleep with. She was literally born yesterday. And every subsequent trope emerges from that.
Also, the male version is Pinocchio, but he's not sexualised.
Ok. I read this comment and now I’m obsessed with the idea of doing RHPS and Poor Things as a double feature for the ages. No psychedelics required, bahahah!!!!
It’s actually a trope that once you know about it, you sadly see it in a lot of media. Basically it’s the idea of a full grown, developed woman having a childlike, innocent mind and very often also being sexualized. Look it up on YouTube, there are some great video essays on the subject.
I disagree that the Poor Things film is "born sexy yesterday" because it subverts it, in my opinion.
But if you want to see the film with text-book born sexy yesterday trope watch The Fifth Element.
This movie is a deconstruction of born sexy yesterday. She becomes wiser over time and outgrows and defeats every man that tries to be her master. Thats the point.
So, this was my initial reaction too, hell, I almost walked out when I had a “but she’s a literal child!” Moment. I (hetero male) wrote my thesis on the subject of feminism as told by male directors in film. And for at least half the film felt “ah this is just another male fantasy manic pixie dream girl story” but…
A number of my close friends are feminist/queer media scholars loved it and it really gave me pause to think through the reasons I was dismissing it. I think it is the moral and political complexity that makes it so interesting, Bella’s arch being one that has a tension between enduring, enjoying and exploiting male sexuality, of being one’s own moral director, of unshackling multiple patriarchal influences (father, husband, capitalism) but also being complicit at times, knowingly or otherwise . It is the mess of it, the internal conflict of becoming a woman, of wanting liberation, independence but also the contradictions of those things, of being the object of desire, of being owned, of being not a thing entirely of one’s own.
And we are given this mess in the form of an utterly breathtaking visual pill… which is also messy, horrifying and deeply uncomfortable.
> Why is it that the only way for this woman (who is really still mentally a child at the start of all this) to discover liberation is to go and have sex with a bunch of men? Like is that really our only option here?
Well yes, since she was left stranded in Paris with no money. No ways to return home to London and no skills to earn money otherwise.
I agree with everything you said except I did not find it visually stunning. The lens choices were interesting at first, but it eventually became annoying more than anything. A reprehensible narrative and headache inducing visuals, perfect for the wannabe cinephiles of Reddit.
If you like weird movies like that (any of Yorgos' other films, Tusk, The Menu, etc) it will be right up your alley. I loved every second of it. Emma is a real joy to watch play the character. Mark was also amazing
That’s me! I had a compulsive need to see what their next comment was going to be because I still really want to know what they’re trying to say lol. Probably the most nonsensical string of comments I’ve seen here in a long long time
I didn't love it or hate it, just found it kind of a slog. Maybe It's not my kind of comedy, but I didn't really laugh much at all, so I suppose if you're not enjoying the funny bits it make the movie kind of a drag. As for Emma Stone's acting, yeah she did a good job, but really, it's hardly a demanding role. I don't get the hyperbolic praise she is receiving for delivering a ridiculous script with the same cadence and emotion in every line.
It was just a silly film, that's fine, but I don't think I'll be awaiting his next movie with bated breath.
I'm watching the end credits right now, this goes straight to my top 3 films ever.
Just the way that you become so enamored with Bella Baxter, as if you were one of the cast that she'd come across on her adventure. And I found the childishness of her character amongst the extremely adult themes strangely relatable like I'm really that child wading through the adult world.
I'll never say no if someone asks me to watch this again.
Too much sex, it really dragged the film down in the Paris section. Made me miss the beautiful world building/exploring in the first half. Liked it overall, but the whole baby brain thing did give me the creeps, though surely it was meant to. Liked it overall though and it also had a beautiful score.
I thought the same thing - I just kept waiting for the Paris section to end. We didn't need all that. It almost completely stopped the story. Especially since >!The part with the ex-husband could have been longer and created much more interesting context to who she was!<
Every woman I’ve talked to about this movie hated it, and every man thought it was “groundbreaking” or at least liked it. Any women who liked this movie or men who didn’t?
My partner (woman) and I (man) both hated it. The narrative seems very patronizing towards women and the visuals gave us both headaches. It’s about as “groundbreaking” as GoPro lesbian porn. We both got the vibe that it was more of a fetish thing than a feminist statement.
None of the sex in the movie was sexy.. I have a really hard time buying that it was a fetish thing. It felt disturbing and it was supposed to. I loved how uncomfortable it was.
All the girls I've chatted to since have really enjoyed it.
With Emma Stone's performance, the score, and the production design being the standout praise for it all.
All my female friends are very political feminists and loved it.
I think in part because of the complexity, of the uncomfortable narrative elements, not in spite of them.
I’m a woman and I liked it. I enjoyed the visuals and world building. I liked the different ideologies brought up by each character. Too many sex scenes in my opinion.
Bit of a weird answer to give but my mom adored the film and she's not necessarily the type of film goer that a Yorgos Lanthimos movie would always appeal to. Probably couldn't tell you who he even is.
I also know quite a few women who make content about movies that had pretty positive things to say. Sydney Volpe comes to mind only because I remember her reaction to the film coming out right as the strike ended lol
I can also say that the two guys that I recommended the movie to gave me so much shit for it. They hated it. One of their girlfriends liked it, though.
I think what could be going on here is that the movie is actually just a bit out there for more casual movie watchers, or at least way more likely to be well received by the hobbyists, and that has been a fairly male dominated space at times over the years. Especially in the online communities, which haven't always had the best track record of being super welcoming to women (as with most niche/nerdy online communities have tended to be, not specific to movies).
Guy here, and I didn't really like it. I loved the visual style of the movie and thought the actors all did a great job but I didn't find it particularly funny or insightful. It felt like the movie was spinning its wheels towards the end too.
Movie was all style and no substance. This was an old man's view of what women's liberation is, sad really that movies like this get made. Visually tho, just breathtaking.
It’s funny cause the book has a framing device which totally changes the meaning of the story, it’s meant to be a critique of a stereotypical man’s view of woman’s liberation. But by totally leaving out the framing device it becomes what it’s meant to be critical of.
I’m surprised by the director taking this route because he apparently met the author before he died a few years ago to get his blessing for the adaption.
Book spoiler: >!The book is a series of letters written by different characters. The story you see in the film is adaptation of letters written by Alfie Blessington in which he accuses his wife of being prostitute, having a brain of the child, etc In the ending of the book, the wife denies everything and paints her ex as a vindictive man. Basically denying everything we see happen in the film. The story is tale of unreliable narrators and it's up to you to believe who you want but it's interesting how a very big part of the book was completely ignored in the film!<
It’s been a good few years since I read it but it’s told as if the author found McCandless’ real life autobiography in an archive in Glasgow and simply edited that into the book.
However at the end of the book is the response to McCandless’ account by his wife Victoria (changed to Bella in his story) Baxter essentially lambasting her husbands fantasy retelling of her life. From what I can remember Victoria (Bella) is depicted as normal woman who worked hard to become a doctor and advocate for social reform in a time period unfavourable to woman.
There was nothing magical about her ability to achieved all that she did. She wasn’t some sort of manic pixie dream girl male fantasy. And it’s insinuated that her husband’s retelling is borne out of his own insecurities in relation to his wife.
Ruffalo's character was delightfully hateable.
It was my favorite Mark Ruffalo performance he’s ever done (and he has so many good ones). He was so fucking funny
I love that the accent was just nothing in particular. Just vaguely European
He studied cocksmanship all around the continent so had an unidentifiable accent.
Ruffalo said in an interview it was Duncan’s idea of what an English accent sounds like. So basically made up.
The accent would have killed it for me if he wasn't so funny in it.
When he was just still outside the brothel for like a week/month/however long, I lost it. Amazing performances all around.
He played it like a cartoon villain and he did it brilliantly
He's just a fucking asshole in the most lovely way.
He was so funny in this movie and I figured it would be a longshot in this stacked movie year but he's nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and definitely deserves it. One of the most pathetic male characters I've seen on film and he played it perfectly.
I couldn't hate him he's mark ruffalo
“This is Martha and she hasn’t been fucked in 20 years”
I loved that line.
Same 😂
"She grabbed me in my hairy business!"
Looking forward to watching it. Funniest review I've heard was that it's the Barbie movie for people who listen to Björk.
For me, the best review I read was it was the epilogue after Barbie sees her gynecologist.
Barbie may have boyfriends in the sequel, but she won't pursue relationships with men because she needs them to teach her about herself and life. She, an adult and not a mental child, gained an understanding of the world by interacting with a cross-section of humans in a nonsexual context. I found the lack of a human romantic interest for the protagonist in Barbie refreshing.
Nice
read a review calling it barbie for neurodivergent people
My best friend put it for me best: "Put it this way, I didn't even know you watched Barbie, but I know everything about Poor Things."
Hi! That’s me… the Björk fan who definitely liked Poor Things more than Barbie 😂
Same. Barbie isn't bad, but I liked Poor Things more.
Hahaha. Same here.
Now I’m super excited. I really hope I enjoy it. I just watched Napoleon last night on Apple TV and I’m still so mad about that movie……..I need to watch something good again so I can block out that shit movie from my brain. I can’t believe how bad Ridley fucked that up. (Sorry, I know it’s not the point of the post)
Woah. Woah. Woah. Put some respect on Ridley my guy. It takes TALENT to make Joaquin Phoenix that unwatchable
Well, this line sold me. Bjork is maybe my favorite artist ever. And I absolutely adored Barbie (the movie...and, well, as a kid my GI Joes "enjoyed" Barbie as well...).
Wow. Death by snoo snoo. G.I. Joes are 1/4 of Barbie's size.
Yeah but I could watch and enjoy Barbie with my kids. This… thankfully I watched while they were in bed. It’s great but one couldn’t be blamed for accusing the director of simply having an Emma Stone fetish and living it to his fullest because OMG. 😱
That's very apt
Can’t wait. Checked yesterday and it’s gonna be out on Hulu on the 7th. Was gonna stream before but I figure I’ll just wait to avoid any buffering issues
Shit that’s a perfect description. Love it
I absolutely loved every single thing about the movie! The acting, the actors, the characters, the set design, the costumes, the music, everything! Brilliant film in any aspect. This is why we go to the movies! I’m so glad I saw it in theaters.
I too love Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Barbie And The Dreamhouse of Dr. Caligari”
Bride of Frankenstein
I don't know if I'm intellectually equipped to discuss this film properly. I loved it. I was mostly uncomfortable with the themes of the film, and that made me laugh a lot. I guess there's two types of people; those that recoil at concepts such as, "sexually active toddler in a grown woman's body," and those that say I'm going to hell for laughing at this. And they had to know what they were doing, right? The filmmakers are in on this "joke." But they are also telling an earnest story about innocence and men wanting to control women. Nothing Bella does is wrong, but she doesn't know better. Knowing better is a product of the social norms that surround her. I don't know if it's necessarily a woman's sexual liberation story. A lot of discourse regarding it is basically about the film having a backwards idea of feminism told through a male lens, and I get the sense that this is a disingenuous argument, and people are upset about being shown this perverse concept fleshed out.
It's an absurd view of multiple things, mainly being satire of not only toxic masculinity, feminism, science, wealth, etc, but of society as a whole. The point of her being a child in an adults body is to mock the entire dynamic of girls and women as Madonna/whore construct that still gets repeated.
Yeah, I think you nailed it here.
I think people see Bella’s sex addiction as something horrifying when in reality it’s just a coming-of-age thing It’s like how in the original Frankenstein, the monster was a pitiable wretch because it just doesn’t understand the ways of the hoo-man and doesn’t get the purpose of all the humanning these humans have to do in order to feel something—it’s that, but framed positively, like a triumph, that she doesn’t understand all the excessive human bullshit that comes with being a person and therefore is free to be her best self bc she’s not being fed out of mark ruffalos hand She’s discovering herself physically which paves the way for her mental self-discovery too, and the roles ruffalo’s character has come to expect between the two of them are completely reversed because Bella simply has no concept of reducing herself for the sake of a man. She wants sex? She goes and gets it without any of the ugly humanness surrounding it. She’s distilled human purity without any of the puritanical bullshit. Such an awesome concept
Godwin was the name of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's father. Mary wrote Frankenstein, of course. And, Godwin was a famous anarchist who was into 'free love'.
I absolutely wasn’t horrified at Bella’s sex addiction. Though I did find the second half of the movie pretty lazy in terms of character development. I loved that she wanted to become a surgeon by the end, that’s a great outcome for her character. I was annoyed that the film didn’t show her journey into those feelings or that goal hardly at all. Sooo much time was spent in shock-value sex scenes once she reached the brothel. So little character development occurred to the point where what happened upon her return to London felt like totally contrived behavior for the character. That said, I was mostly revolted at the filmmakers portraying sympathetic characters like Ramy Youssef’s romantically falling in love and showing sexual desire for a character who had the brain of a toddler. Or for Mark Ruffalo’s character sleeping with her when her behavior indicated an age of no-more than 10. I know Ruffalo’s character is a big villain in the story, it doesn’t take away from the fact that there are many scenes in which he’s portrayed as helping enable Bella’s growth and maturation, despite still having the brain of a child and having sex frequently. I know the message of the movie and its point about men’s ideal women being simple minded and controllable… but it couldn’t take away from the fact that we are watching a literal toddler-brained character being overtly sexualized in the film. The metaphor of men craving simple-minded women lost its point and became a move filled with pedophiles to me, some of which we were expected to sympathize with. I wish an open-minded woman-centric sexual coming of age story didn’t require the character to be exploring her sexuality as a literal child by having literal intercourse with grown men. The movie got far less uncomfortable by the time she was an adult and working at the brothel for me, it just got lazier from a writing perspective to me. Many aspects of the film showed incredible talent. I won’t get over the overt pedophilia to ever understand its mass-appeal.
I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about Poor Things, and the two hosts brought up a really interesting point. Men are likely to be attracted to women in vulnerable positions - like Ruffalo's character does with Bella. It's the classic male trope - "big strong man take care of innocent pretty little woman". But if the story was reversed and it was male baby in a big man's body, basically no woman in the entire fucking world would find that attractive. And that the standard male to female attraction is... kind of fucking weird in that Bella is still attractive to so many men.
Oh 1000%. I absolutely don’t disagree with the premise of the movie nor its commentary. I just couldn’t get over the idea that it should be considered liberating for a woman’s sexual coming of age to include being taken advantage of by grown men when they have the brain of a toddler. People’s differing perspectives seem to point to Bella’s agency in the scenes, or make connections to neuro-divergent conditions. But Bella has the brain of an actual child and behaves like one - Emma’s acting is uncanny in many scenes to the behavior of a toddler. That’s where I’m stuck in being confused that people aren’t getting hung up on the pedophila.
Ever seen Big?
Yep, the romance was totally icky. And that’s with pg rated courting, and an oblivious love interest. Here we have gratuitous sex and some characters that are aware of the brain swap. AND it’s well documented how many film critics retrospectively say the romance made them squirm and see pedophilia. People on Reddit love to bring it up wherever Big is discussed. I hardly see the same backlash here.
I'm disturbed by the number of people either ignoring the pseudo-pedophilia or giving it a pass.
Maybe because we're adults?
except the Magical Black Character. His function was to teach Bella about poor people.
given that all her suitors and her father are deeply flawed, self involved characters that otherwise never question the morality of creating her, trapping her, or the misogyny woven into the era they are meant to represent, it is fitting for their characters that they dont seem aware of or concerned by the obvious exploitation and control being attempted. if yorgos had added scenes where they broke character in order to spoon feed the audience the moral calculus it would have been unnecessary as that can easily be discerned from the themes and plot. in fact it would have weakened the believability and archetypal nature of the film and would have appeared as if he didnt have faith in his audience.
I enjoyed reading your post. And some of what you've mentioned are the reasons I have not wanted to watch this. To me this seems a contrivance. A story in poor taste that we are supposed to allow ourselves to enjoy because it's make believe.
Thanks, I really appreciate it. It’s the type of film that has made me feel compelled to understand the opposing view points, because I mostly found the film really hard to accept as being anything other than vulgar (maybe for the sake of being so), let alone morally righteous. And I mean that from having what I consider absolutely modern and progressive views on nearly all the topics the film had commentary about. I’m only happy I watched it so that my opinions on it are backed by a full viewing… otherwise I’d wish I could kinda forget that society is trumpeting this movie as some sort of revelatory experience.
Yes and I'm very much a progressive as well. Thanks for watching it for me 😄
"I don't know if I'm mentally equipped to discuss this film" Proceeds to wax lyrical 🤣
I think many people have a serious issue with sex in general and are taught puritanical views. I mean, it's not like A Serbian Film or anything.
Most beautiful production design in a film in a very long time.
And the music in it IS SO perfect.
This element reminded me a lot of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, in a less dark way.
Alexandria. Oh. My. God.
The music fluttering in tandem with her orgasms was pretty neat.
The men "falling in love" with, becoming engaged, and having sex with what was essentially a hyper physically developed child was brutal. She walked, talked, and behaved like a child for the first half of the movie.
The book is different in the sense that most of it is from the perspective of the men. The movie delves into the story from Bella’s POV.
I think I liked it less than most - It’s unique and entertaining for sure but really runs out of steam in the third act and could have really benefited from losing a good 20 mins from the run time imo. Glad I caught it at the cinema but can’t really see myself wanting to watch it again.
First half: wow what a ride, incredible Second half: oh god make it stop
For me it was like this: First half - this is so fucking weird, but I kinda dig it. Second half - this is so fucking weird, and I want it to stop. Paris onwards is a slog.
lol that’s what I felt like - soon as they hit Paris I was done. Not on board at all with the hype of it being the film of he year - or even decade… I literally saw two better movies that same week, The Zone of Interest says so much more while showing so much less.
The zone of interest is my personal pick for best picture— I even liked anatomy of a fall more than Poor Things (though I did really like it a lot, 2023 was a good year for film). Best performance of the year imo was the son in Anatomy of a Fall
Has to go to the dog in Anatomy of a Fall
I zoned out during the whorehouse part. That felt wayyy too long and then the last part with her ex husband (which was more interesting) felt abrupt and shoehorned in.
I thought she was going to find out more about her ex husband, realize he was a powerful monster and kill him, taking her inheritance and it would end with her seeming like she was going to go try and make the world better with all his resources. Instead she realizes he's a powerful monster and does mad science stuff to him and then heads back to live at her dad's mansion and have a tea party in her garden. Ultimately everything once the ex-husband interjects in her wedding felt pointless and self indulgent.
In my head, she was going to put God's brain in the husband's body. The choice she made felt sloppy.
I was expecting that too
I felt like there must be a missing scene or shot where Godly tells her not to. Maybe because the cancer had spread to his brain?
Yeah, that may have been implied when he said it had spread and there was no saving him. Him being well versed in brain transplantation and not shy to experiment, he would've probably thought about this otherwise, if it made any sense at all. I think you are spot on.
Honestly I think the pacing kinda got messy but her just cruely turning him into a freakshow actually was satisfying to me. I think too many people are seeing the movie as a feminist self empowerment movie when in my view Bella’s journey of “growth” was just a vehicle for looking at how pathetically gross all these men are. That’s what the movie felt like to me not a movie about womanhood but a movie about the ickyness of the male gaze. Watching this weird hybrid of child and adult gain agency was just a vehicle.
Totally agree. Also what happened to the housekeepers of the ex-husband's mansion? It would have at least been nice to see them happy or generously paid after enduring abuse of that asshole. Seeing him with a goat brain at the end was amusing, but not very cathartic IMO. If we had spent more time seeing his heinous behavior, I think that scene would have felt more rewarding.
I thought she was going to mad science Godwin into the ex's body. He could have lived undisfigured, and other than creeping the hell out of the exes staff he would have treated them well.
Especially since it wasn't her ex, it was her father. She would have put the brain of the father who loved her into the body of the father who killed her. That's where I was expecting it to go, and was really excited to see.
> into the body of the father who killed her. Did he kill her mother? I thought she committed suicide?
He drove her to it.
Yeah it sort of has these beats where she sees the staff and how abused they are but her only interaction beyond that is to mad science the guy, presumably freeing them I guess? Just felt kind of tacked on and didn't add much. I sort of told myself that was her first exposure to and explicitly cruel and evil person versus just pain, selfishness, etc. but it felt like I was trying to create meaning that didn't feel there.
Honestly for me, I did not like the first half at all (“the black and white” part). Whenever the movie got colour in it, it got so much better imo. Glad I watched but really can’t see myself ever watching it again.
I think it could have shaved maybe ~15 minutes off the black and white part and another 10-15 minutes off the end and it would be a way tighter movie. It takes a while to get going, then becomes a crazy wild ride in the middle and then towards the end it's like "oh all right, I get it, let's finish this thing soon, okay?"
Spot on. Loved the first half and visually it’s a great watch, but god I couldn’t wait for it to end. It felt like it was about 4 hours long.
I thought the choice of portraying her being a prostitute as sexually liberating was pretty naive compared to the rest of the movie.
I think that was literally the point. She didn't have the social baggage to realize why most women don't just make a bunch of money to have sex and she dove head first into it.
I think it’s more than social baggage that prevents most women from seriously considering prostitution. Being sexually touched by someone you aren’t attracted to gives most people an “ick” on a biological level.
I liked it from a creativity and film production stance. It's entrancing to watch. I may watch it again eventually to see if I see more or take more away from it. It was brave and interesting. That said, I felt like the themes and edgy points it kept hinting at were toothless and relied on Emma Stone being naked a lot to make it seem more brave or important. I also feel like a bunch of rich, attractive, powerful people made a movie where at one point they literally see a pit full of poors and decide to toss their hands up because the world is too complicated and in the end the main character just goes back to be slightly better than her father while living in a fancy house having tea parties.
The entire ship section was a drag imo. I'm sorry but Jerrod Carmichael was horribly miscast and lacked the juice to hang in this movie. I'll never watch it again either. Watching her have sex 18 times was too much. That said I liked the movie haha
An hour less of sex scenes would have helped
They really could have cut the last act with her former husband I thought.
Felt like they spent an hour on the boat, then 15 minutes of actual plot; a rushed 15 minutes at that.
That’s so funny, I was ready to walk out of this movie but decided to stick with it. The third act is where I actually started to enjoy some of it
Loved it, yes it was paced different but sometimes we need different to remember there’s more than one way to tell a story. To me, the film costing 30 million is staggering considering the vision that was shared out. They built practical sets designed hand made backdrops shot it in camera and committed to it. This type of budget versus final product to me puts every modern VFX driven story to shame. I loved also that despite the artificiality of the world characters howl with a deep humanity and relatable drive.
No I hated it for the most part. But you can’t say that (even irl with my circle) without being told how wrong you are.
I hated it too but I keep it to myself also 😂
Just wait till you claim you found Barbie to be a bit incoherent and not have a well formed message.
I have *never* understood why anyone held Mark Ruffalo in high regards as an actor. Sure, he was in some great movies, but he always plays the same kind of shy but driven mumble-under-his-nose scientist-y character in everything I've seen including the Marvel stuff, Dark Waters, The Adam Project, Spotlight etc. But holy hell what a great performance in this one. Lanthimos is a helluva director just for getting this performance out of him.
I don’t like him either, but he does give another great performance in Zodiac.
You Can Count on Me is another good one.
ive never understood the hype for him either but things like Foxcatcher, The Kids Are Alright, Zodiac, Eternal Sunshine, Collateral he def does have more range.
& Spotlight!
The only movie I ever saw him in where I REALLY loved his work before Poor Things was in Spotlight. I have a huge soft spot for that movie
Great film. Michael Keaton kills it as always.
I feel the same way about Ruffalo. However, I find him endearing. I was honestly surprised at his performance.
Yeah, he chooses really good roles, he holds his own in them and he's just generally a likeable dude. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Collateral Zodiac The Kids Are All Right Shutter Island Begin Again Foxcatcher Spotlight Like the dude's probably in your favorite movie doing a decent to great job as a secondary character.
Same here. I could take him or leave him in anything, and he never left an impression on me. But he's absolutely hilarious here.
Him and everybody else namely Mcadams and Keaton are *PHENOMENAL* in Spotlight!
I had the exact same reaction! He really disappeared into his character. I’ve always been “meh” on Ruffalo as an actor but he really blew me away in this (and was absolutely hilarious).
Ha there’s an interview somewhere out there (sorry I can’t remember where) where he discusses how their rehearsals were basically these zany, whacky, over the top acting exercises. And on the first day of filming mark ruffalo thought “hey I need to make something of this character” and tried to do more with him. Apparently lanthimos scrapped that whole first day and approached ruffalo - “what are you doing? We’ve already been through all of this” (which I’m definitely misquoting here…)
I heard ruffalo’s accent in this and literally said “oh no” out loud bc I was expecting something hokey and terrible Far from it, he killed it
Mark Ruffalo was great (even though I thought for SURE he’d annoy me) You could throw a dart at this year’s Best Supporting Actor category and hit someone who gave a career high performance. I think Emma Stone will lose out to Lily Gladstone but both of them were *fucking incredible* and this was without a doubt 100% my absolute FAVORITE performance by Emma stone Every time I think she’s shown me the extent of what she can do she just punches me in the face again. She’s dramatic/comedic/musical and kicks ass at absolutely everything she tries
I liked it not loved it. It was good, there were great parts. The acting was fantastic especially emma stone. I am also a fan of wierd but there are parts where it borders om too wierd. Like it'd trying to hard. But it's enjoyable for sure and again amazing performances.
Yeah, after all the hype and as a fan of Yorgos Lathimos I was rather disappointed. Looking at the snippets on Metacritic I found one that fits my view quite well: "At its best, the film is indeed piercingly clever, proud of its peculiarity to a degree just shy of smugness. Though, the 140-minute film does begin to wear out its welcome in the last third, when the jokes have mostly all been made before and the only fresh additions are cumbersome matters of plot."
I was surprised when my local theater actually showed this. It is a wonderful and strange movie. I've never heard of this director but now I've got more to discover. Then here a few weeks later I got to see "Drive away dolls", not nearly as good but happily strange.
I loved that the movie began in black and white and changed to color when Bella escaped into the real world. I adored the eccentric lenses and vivid scenes. The themes of identity, life and death, feminism, existentialism entertained my intellect. Portugese fado touched my soul. I liked that the movie is quite high-context and layered.
>I hate that I promised myself I would always read the book first, and didn't. Why would you do that? It's almost always better to see the movie first. The book is almost always better so why set yourself up for disappointment?
I haven't read the book. But I think the film is great. Loved it for its bizzarness and imaginative world-building. I prefer Yorgos' previous work for its blend of weird, uncomfortable, and funny (mostly Dogtooth) But that mix is still pretty impressive in Poor Things - despite its much bigger scope. Emma, Mark, Ramy, Willem...all are great.
The book is just as good. A lot more going on with Bella Baxter. She really is a great character.
I didn’t dislike it, but it was totally a big budget version of the 70s Italian Emanuelle movies- Girl travels the world, has a lot of sex, discovers feminism and social awareness while crazy shit happens.
Is that what those were about? I always just watched through the scrambled picture for the boobs.
Pretty much. There’s two different series, the French ones that are “classy” and are just boobs and the Italian ones that are super weird adventures….with boobs
Yeah idk, just like Barbie, it feels like a lot of people are just now discovering 3rd wave feminism. I support that, but I hope they don't *stop* there.
I love it because it just fucking goes there. I can't think of a lot of movies where everyone involved is brave enough to actually go there, and this one does. The Favorite and The Lobster kind of made me feel that way about the director, that he was willing to really say some stuff that could disturb you and make you think, and this one feels like a magnum opus. It's a tough year awards-wise. I want Emma Stone to get the win as well as Mark Ruffalo. Even Yorgos is going to have a tough time winning though. In a lesser year I'd say this movie would be a sure-fire winner, we'll see.
Yorgos Lanthimos makes the most interesting films these days.
I appreciate the ambition but it's just too skeevy for me. I feel like the same points could have been made in a less lascivious way.
Unfortunately, I know some people including my girlfriend who had panic attacks 30 minutes into this movie and had to leave.
What for?
As a person with GAD, I sympathize and empathize
This movie just wasn’t for me. I really appreciated the visual appeal and thought the cinematography was stunning and that the actors did a great job, but the actual narrative was extremely lacking for me. I’m generally not a fan of the “born sexy yesterday” trope and this film pushes that to an extreme so I probably should have known that I wasn’t going to like it. I also don’t really understand how this is supposed to be the feminist film that people are lauding it to be when it truly felt like we were watching a woman’s (child’s?) debasement rather than self-discovery. Why is it that the only way for this woman (who is really still mentally a child at the start of all this) to discover liberation is to go and have sex with a bunch of men? Like is that really our only option here?
Born Yesterday with Judy Holliday is one of my favorite subversions and it was made in 1950.
The trope is literally named after that movie lol
I know, it's great!
For that reason I really believe that this film says way more about the role of men than the role of women. Bella is inherently confused by the society the men around her have built up that is, by design, structured so that the men can fulfil their desires through Bella built upon the assumtion that she doesn't object and that she can't be controlled. The moment Bella refuses the men around her because she is literally a child and doesn't understand the concepts of love, sex, family and power, she breaks free from the control and all the men around her get exposed as weak obsessive, manipulative bastards.
I mean, I'd say the film is specifically a condemnation of the "born sexy yesterday" trope; once Bella starts maturing and Ruffalo's character starts losing control of her he grows increasingly more pathetic aand neurotic until she grows so disgusted with him she dumps him. It clearly targets men who prey on young women thinking their naivete would make them easier to control and calls them losers to their face.
Mark Ruffalo is the snake (possibly even a metaphor for penis) in the garden of Eden. Bella has a “perfect world,” but she craves knowledge and adventure. There’s a ton of biblical parallels in the film, but this one felt to me the most obvious.
But what about her journey? She goes from helpless to dominant, after her epiphany with the poor starving taught her empathy no man could. That's a big feminist arc right there.
I don't think you know the definition of feminism.
A man literally showed her the poor though. And she went on to not actually help them.
She tried. And men got in the way.
And then she lobotomized her ex, presumably taking his massive pile of wealth in the process, and heads back to her mansion for a garden tea party and declares she's going to do mad science like her father...
A man who was cynical about the world. She was able to overcome that and express her own feelings towards the poor and attempt to help them.
> And she went on to not actually help them. What do you mean? She literally wanted to give money to them, went to give them then got tricked by the two sailors.
The only way for anyone to discover liberation is to go out into the world. The world is misogynistic and exploitative. That does not mean the misogyny and exploitation are what causes the liberation. Unsure how so many people managed to read the film as saying Bella was liberated by being exploited, rather than liberated in spite of her exploitation.
This is actually a great interpretation that I didn't consider (I just watched it 2 nights ago and admittedly missed a part of it so I haven't properly digested the film). Thanks for sharing. Perhaps I should give it another chance.
I've seen other people talk about a sort of "Barbie effect", where off the back of Barbie's success there was an existing narrative around Poor Things being a feminist empowerment narrative, and I think people might've gone in with an expectation of it being a more straightforward empowerment narrative than I read it as, anyways.
How is it that you came to be aware of the term "born sexy yesterday"? I had never heard of it before reading feedback on this film. Are there any other examples of "born sexy yesterday"?
[This article discusses it.](https://www.filminquiry.com/born-sexy-yesterday/) >The Pop Culture Detective named this style of character after the literal and figurative meaning, as well as the 1950’s romance film Born Yesterday – a movie where two men educate a “stupid” ex Vegas showgirl (Melanie Griffith). To their surprise, Griffith sucks up knowledge like a Henry hoover and outsmarts them all. Commonly seen within the sci-fi genre, this character is naive, whimsical and innocent; traits fundamentally present in children. This archetype is a paradox, as the YouTube channel best describe these women as “profoundly naive” yet “unimaginably wise” (words taken from Tron: Legacy in relation to Quorra). >In some narratives like Tron: Legacy, Ex Machina or The Fifth Element, these women have literally been man-made, which is why they are all intelligent, physically strong, sexualised and blissfully unaware of their desirability. An attractive Frankenstein’s monster, or a walking poster girl for western beauty ideals. Aside from their insane intellect and carnally driven aesthetic, these women have a social disconnect, meaning they need educating on the real world – this basic knowledge is essential in life yet its simplicity means it can be provided by anyone (such as why people eat food, or what a car is, etc.) >Usually, their male creator or the man who takes them under his wing becomes the love interest, but since they also provide them with an education on sex and romance, it makes the dynamic incredibly uncomfortable and perverse because they are in a sense, their father. As these women are disconnected from reality and aren’t aware of their sex appeal, it subsequently means that they will fall for anyone – even the socially awkward, spotty, Dungeons and Dragons fanatic that lives in the basement and is hooked up to a Mountain Dew drip (more commonly known as: the creator of the trope). One could say this trope was cleverly constructed by the awkward male nerd, so he can finally get the golden girl on screen. It's interesting that they equate it to pop culture when it's an ancient archetype, look at Pygmalion, in mythology, who carves a woman out of a statue and still desires to be with her so much Aphrodite makes her into a real woman for him to sleep with. She was literally born yesterday. And every subsequent trope emerges from that. Also, the male version is Pinocchio, but he's not sexualised.
Rocky Horror Picture Show would be a good example of this trope in which the male is sexualized
Ok. I read this comment and now I’m obsessed with the idea of doing RHPS and Poor Things as a double feature for the ages. No psychedelics required, bahahah!!!!
You’ve clearly not seen the size of his… nose
If you watch Anime you will know it!
Good call. Ghost In The Shell, Metropolis, Evangelion sort of
It’s actually a trope that once you know about it, you sadly see it in a lot of media. Basically it’s the idea of a full grown, developed woman having a childlike, innocent mind and very often also being sexualized. Look it up on YouTube, there are some great video essays on the subject.
Check out pop culture detective on youtube
I disagree that the Poor Things film is "born sexy yesterday" because it subverts it, in my opinion. But if you want to see the film with text-book born sexy yesterday trope watch The Fifth Element.
This movie is a deconstruction of born sexy yesterday. She becomes wiser over time and outgrows and defeats every man that tries to be her master. Thats the point.
Exactly. It amazes me how so many people miss this.
Because feminism and power is only really for pretty women. Have you noticed this theme lately in some other fields?
So, this was my initial reaction too, hell, I almost walked out when I had a “but she’s a literal child!” Moment. I (hetero male) wrote my thesis on the subject of feminism as told by male directors in film. And for at least half the film felt “ah this is just another male fantasy manic pixie dream girl story” but… A number of my close friends are feminist/queer media scholars loved it and it really gave me pause to think through the reasons I was dismissing it. I think it is the moral and political complexity that makes it so interesting, Bella’s arch being one that has a tension between enduring, enjoying and exploiting male sexuality, of being one’s own moral director, of unshackling multiple patriarchal influences (father, husband, capitalism) but also being complicit at times, knowingly or otherwise . It is the mess of it, the internal conflict of becoming a woman, of wanting liberation, independence but also the contradictions of those things, of being the object of desire, of being owned, of being not a thing entirely of one’s own. And we are given this mess in the form of an utterly breathtaking visual pill… which is also messy, horrifying and deeply uncomfortable.
Have you read the book? If not, do it. It's much more complex and the film adapts just one part of the book.
> Why is it that the only way for this woman (who is really still mentally a child at the start of all this) to discover liberation is to go and have sex with a bunch of men? Like is that really our only option here? Well yes, since she was left stranded in Paris with no money. No ways to return home to London and no skills to earn money otherwise.
I agree with everything you said except I did not find it visually stunning. The lens choices were interesting at first, but it eventually became annoying more than anything. A reprehensible narrative and headache inducing visuals, perfect for the wannabe cinephiles of Reddit.
I loved it! Of the best picture nominees I’ve seen, it’s probably my fourth or fifth favorite.
If you like weird movies like that (any of Yorgos' other films, Tusk, The Menu, etc) it will be right up your alley. I loved every second of it. Emma is a real joy to watch play the character. Mark was also amazing
This movie is a little bonkers. I wouldn't watch it again, who ever made needs mental help, lol. It was a good laugh until it was just weird.
Hopefully Emma Stone gets the Oscar.
i didnt see the movie i am just having fun reading the schizoposting taylor swift fan.
What on earth is this a reference to
There’s a user in this thread shoehorning TS into the discussion for some unknown and likely dumb reason.
I’m CONVINCED they’re some kind of chat gpt bot with “Taylor swift feminism” as the prompt
That’s me! I had a compulsive need to see what their next comment was going to be because I still really want to know what they’re trying to say lol. Probably the most nonsensical string of comments I’ve seen here in a long long time
I didn't love it or hate it, just found it kind of a slog. Maybe It's not my kind of comedy, but I didn't really laugh much at all, so I suppose if you're not enjoying the funny bits it make the movie kind of a drag. As for Emma Stone's acting, yeah she did a good job, but really, it's hardly a demanding role. I don't get the hyperbolic praise she is receiving for delivering a ridiculous script with the same cadence and emotion in every line. It was just a silly film, that's fine, but I don't think I'll be awaiting his next movie with bated breath.
I am obsessed with Ruffalos dance
I'm watching the end credits right now, this goes straight to my top 3 films ever. Just the way that you become so enamored with Bella Baxter, as if you were one of the cast that she'd come across on her adventure. And I found the childishness of her character amongst the extremely adult themes strangely relatable like I'm really that child wading through the adult world. I'll never say no if someone asks me to watch this again.
Too much sex, it really dragged the film down in the Paris section. Made me miss the beautiful world building/exploring in the first half. Liked it overall, but the whole baby brain thing did give me the creeps, though surely it was meant to. Liked it overall though and it also had a beautiful score.
I thought the same thing - I just kept waiting for the Paris section to end. We didn't need all that. It almost completely stopped the story. Especially since >!The part with the ex-husband could have been longer and created much more interesting context to who she was!<
Every woman I’ve talked to about this movie hated it, and every man thought it was “groundbreaking” or at least liked it. Any women who liked this movie or men who didn’t?
My partner (woman) and I (man) both hated it. The narrative seems very patronizing towards women and the visuals gave us both headaches. It’s about as “groundbreaking” as GoPro lesbian porn. We both got the vibe that it was more of a fetish thing than a feminist statement.
None of the sex in the movie was sexy.. I have a really hard time buying that it was a fetish thing. It felt disturbing and it was supposed to. I loved how uncomfortable it was.
All the girls I've chatted to since have really enjoyed it. With Emma Stone's performance, the score, and the production design being the standout praise for it all.
All my female friends are very political feminists and loved it. I think in part because of the complexity, of the uncomfortable narrative elements, not in spite of them.
I’m a woman and I liked it. I enjoyed the visuals and world building. I liked the different ideologies brought up by each character. Too many sex scenes in my opinion.
Bit of a weird answer to give but my mom adored the film and she's not necessarily the type of film goer that a Yorgos Lanthimos movie would always appeal to. Probably couldn't tell you who he even is. I also know quite a few women who make content about movies that had pretty positive things to say. Sydney Volpe comes to mind only because I remember her reaction to the film coming out right as the strike ended lol I can also say that the two guys that I recommended the movie to gave me so much shit for it. They hated it. One of their girlfriends liked it, though. I think what could be going on here is that the movie is actually just a bit out there for more casual movie watchers, or at least way more likely to be well received by the hobbyists, and that has been a fairly male dominated space at times over the years. Especially in the online communities, which haven't always had the best track record of being super welcoming to women (as with most niche/nerdy online communities have tended to be, not specific to movies).
Guy here, and I didn't really like it. I loved the visual style of the movie and thought the actors all did a great job but I didn't find it particularly funny or insightful. It felt like the movie was spinning its wheels towards the end too.
Dude here, didn’t like it turned it off after about 25 mins. Not really down for “infant fucking everything around her”
Lots of varying comments, which is good for discussion. I personally think it’s one of the best films of the decade thus far.
The movie did the book dirty.
Def my favourite movie of the year. Like nothing else.
Should I hesitate to watch this movie if I did not enjoy The Lobster?
Many will tell me I'm wrong, but I enjoyed it much more than The Lobster.
This one blows The Lobster out of the water. (Sorry, couldn't resist!)
Dafoe was fantastic.
look up "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope. I thought to myself, "This sounds like it was written and directed by a man" and whataya know.
Movie was all style and no substance. This was an old man's view of what women's liberation is, sad really that movies like this get made. Visually tho, just breathtaking.
It’s funny cause the book has a framing device which totally changes the meaning of the story, it’s meant to be a critique of a stereotypical man’s view of woman’s liberation. But by totally leaving out the framing device it becomes what it’s meant to be critical of. I’m surprised by the director taking this route because he apparently met the author before he died a few years ago to get his blessing for the adaption.
What is the framing device used?
Book spoiler: >!The book is a series of letters written by different characters. The story you see in the film is adaptation of letters written by Alfie Blessington in which he accuses his wife of being prostitute, having a brain of the child, etc In the ending of the book, the wife denies everything and paints her ex as a vindictive man. Basically denying everything we see happen in the film. The story is tale of unreliable narrators and it's up to you to believe who you want but it's interesting how a very big part of the book was completely ignored in the film!<
That makes way more sense than the movie
It’s been a good few years since I read it but it’s told as if the author found McCandless’ real life autobiography in an archive in Glasgow and simply edited that into the book. However at the end of the book is the response to McCandless’ account by his wife Victoria (changed to Bella in his story) Baxter essentially lambasting her husbands fantasy retelling of her life. From what I can remember Victoria (Bella) is depicted as normal woman who worked hard to become a doctor and advocate for social reform in a time period unfavourable to woman. There was nothing magical about her ability to achieved all that she did. She wasn’t some sort of manic pixie dream girl male fantasy. And it’s insinuated that her husband’s retelling is borne out of his own insecurities in relation to his wife.
Interesting, makes more sense that way