'Poor Things' is a furious jumping good time at the movies
Emma Stone stars in a weirdly fun steampunk ‘Frankenstein’ riff
To paraphrase Billie Eilish on the “Barbie” soundtrack, the central question of Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” is “What was I reanimated for?”
Frankensteining together “Alice in Wonderland,” “Dead Ringers,” “Fear of Flying” and, well, “Frankenstein,” Lanthimos creates a bizarre, funny, raunchy comedy of bad manners that, most unlikely of all, is also a sincere fable about female empowerment.
Reteaming with Lanthimos after “The Favourite,” Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, the ward of a mysterious Victorian surgeon and scientist named Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Godwin (or “God” as Bella calls him) conducts bizarre medical experiments on himself and others, such as fusing a duck’s body with a bulldog’s head, just to see what happens. Lanthimos, who subjects the characters in his films (“The Lobster,” “Dogtooth”) to his own bizarre social experiments for amusement, might feel an affinity with God.
The prize of God’s scientific menagerie is Bella, a grown woman who lurches around Godwin’s estate with freakish movements, grunting and giggling and smashing things for fun. Stone goes for broke in playing the otherworldly Bella like an alien in flouncy skirts, lurching awkwardly around the screen with herky-jerky movements like when I try to play “Fortnite.”
Godwin reveals to his young protege Max (Ramy Youssef) that Bella is actually the reanimated body of a young woman who committed suicide. God rescued the body from the river, and implanted the brain of a newborn baby inside Bella’s head. Just to see what happens.
But Bella is no typical bulldog-duck pet. Her brain develops quickly, and soon she is pushing against the bars of the gilded cage that God has created. In particular, she becomes fixated with sexual pleasure, and runs off with Godwin’s rake of a lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) for marathon bedroom sessions of what Bella calls “furious jumping.” Unbound by the restrictions that her polite society puts on women, Bella goes on a journey of emancipation that includes a political awakening, an interest in science and philosophy, and lots more furious jumping.
Lanthimos, working off a screenplay by Tony McNamara that adapts a novel by Alasdair Gray, goes for maximum weirdness in designing Bella’s world, creating gorgeous steampunk cityscapes that are so drenched in bright colors they make “Wonka” look like “O Brother Where Art Thou?” Fisheye lenses and pinhole cameras provide funhouse-mirror distortions, and every actor seems encouraged to give riotously over-the-top performances. The sneering Ruffalo gets a laugh out of almost every mustache-twirling line reading.
“Poor Things” gets a lot of mileage out of its committed strangeness. But the energy starts to flag towards the end, especially a dreary third act when Bella is recaptured by the cruel husband (Christopher Abbott) of her body’s previous occupant.
There’s not a shred of doubt that Bella won’t retain her newfound freedom, so the film’s go-girl climax rings a bit hollow. More empowering would have been to let Bella, and “Poor Things,” stay their own weird selves rather than conform them to a familiar, comforting narrative.
“Poor Things” is now playing in theaters.