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‘Poor Things’ Review: A Banal Rendition of Sexual Freedom

vulture.com · 1,949 words · saved by 1 readers

This review was originally published on December 15, 2023. At the 2024 Oscars, Poor Things was nominated for 11 awards and has won four. What Poor Things aims to be is a fantasia of sherbet colors and steampunk steel, a Frankenstein-inflected philosophical questioning and a wild girl’s coming of age, a pitch-black farce and a sexual investigation that hinges upon the belief that, yes, women captain their destinies. And I can sense that everyone involved in the film — from screenwriter Tony McNamara, who adapted the novel by Alasdair Grey, to director Yorgos Lanthimos and leading lady Emma Stone, to even composer Jerskin Fendrix — is committed to these ragged, wide-ranging impulses. But those impulses are rancid. For a film whose camera is so obsessed with its lead actress’s body, it is remarkably sterile on the subject. Taking place in the late Victorian era, Poor Things centers on Bella Baxter (Stone), an orphaned young woman under the careful eye of a viciously scarred scientist-surg

Emma Stone fully commits to a banal rendition of faux -feminist sexual freedom. Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures This review was originally published on December 15, 2023. At the 2024 Oscars , Poor Things was nominated for 11 awards and has won four. What Poor Things aims to be is a fantasia of sherbet colors and steampunk steel, a Frankenstein-inflected philosophical questioning and a wild girl’s coming of age, a pitch-black farce and a sexual investigation that hinges upon the belief that, yes, women captain their destinies. And I can sense that everyone involved in the film — fr

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