Poor Things review: A woman’s quest to reclaim her body in Victorian England

The woman now behaves like an infant in an adult’s body. The film is supposed to be a satire/critique on Victorian sexual morality and men claiming ownership over women’s bodies. It is the story of Bella Baxter (played earnestly by Emma Stone), who rediscovers the world, explores her sexuality and reclaims her bodily autonomy.

But this supposedly empowering film comes across as a nauseatingly creepy male sexual fantasy in the first hour as the men around Bella — her God Baxter (Willem Dafoe), Max (Ramy Youssef) — the man Bella is betrothed to and the lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) exploit her in different ways. “She is an experiment, I must control the conditions or the results will not be pure,” says Baxter, Bella’s foster father who wants to keep her locked like a prisoner and even draws a legal agreement for it.

A journey aimed at self-exploration

Max is supposed to be one of the ‘nicer’ men here, like woke men today who pretend to be feminists but are no different. He refuses to kiss Bella, saying, “you are special,” but is rather shamelessly courting her. The fact that Bella is an adult woman who has the mind of a child doesn’t disgust him even a tad bit. Nor does it bother the several award show juries because Poor Things is raking up many nominations this award season; it has 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Actress.

In one scene, Baxter chloroforms Bella when she rebels against his authority and keeps her locked in his castle against her will. Duncan stalks an underage Bella and watches her masturbate from her window. At one point, he sits with her and feels up her inner thighs, trying to convince her to run away with him. We then see Duncan and Bella have sex — the scenes are so off-putting that at one point, the viewer feels complicit in Bella’s abuse. The gaze in the first hour of the film is repulsively eerie as the camera lingers on Bella’s body. 

Granted, a journey aimed at self-exploration needn’t necessarily be all roses. In fact, when one is exploring the world, which the film shows can be quite twisted and predatory, they might get exploited at some point and take away an important lesson. But must this exploitation be shown in elaborate sex scenes as the camera objectifies a woman whose brain clearly isn’t developed?

The sex scenes are not the problem here (the point of women’s bodies being policed and that the film is a satire on Victorian England isn’t entirely lost on this critic) but the context and the way these scenes play out are very exploitative.

The vibe of paedophilic fantasy

Towards the end of the film, Bella transitions into an empowered and liberated woman. After parting ways with Duncan, she works at a brothel where she explores her sexuality. She realizes that men like Duncan wouldn’t want women to “whore themselves out”. But she’d rather live a life where she has autonomy over her body than be a princess stuck in a castle.

“You’re whores!” screams Duncan at one point, slutshaming Bella and her friend Toinette (Suzy Bemba) as they leave for the socialist’s meeting. “We own our means of production,” quips a confident Bella who knows men shouldn’t get to dictate how she lives her life. In the words of the brothel owner, there is something truly ‘delightful’ to see a ‘woman plotting her course to freedom’.

When Bella befriends Martha (Hanna Schygulla) and Harry (Jerrod Carmichael) aboard the ship, her journey of self-exploration begins. “Don’t find hope in religion, socialism and capitalism. We are a f****d species,” Harry tells Bella who at one point, tries to help the poor with Duncan’s money. Bella also quite bravely stands up to Alfie, her husband from her past life and learns about why she chose to die by suicide (Alfie was truly a monster of a man!).

Even though Poor Things works really well as a coming-of-age story, much of the delightful self-exploration happens only in the second half. The gaze of the film is so vastly different in the first and the second halves that it seems like two separate, disjointed films. While the second is an empowering feminist story, the first half unspools as a sinister paedophilic fantasy.

Reclaiming bodily autonomy

A neurodivergent reading of the film reveals more problematic aspects of it. Bella, especially in the initial scenes, comes across as an individual with neurodivergent traits — most of these traits are played for laughs. “What a retard,” says Max when he sees Bella, who is supposed to be an infant, pee herself. Bella’s eccentric traits like licking Max’s ear, smashing plates are all played for laughs.

In an ableist world where neurodivergent individuals are judged harshly by the neurotypicals for not being able to ‘fit in’, must we have an able-bodied actress play an autistic coded character? Agreed, the story demands it — but must these traits be played for laughs? After Bella gains her subjectivity and her brain develops, we go from laughing at her to laughing with her.

But much of the comedy is still at the expense of her autistic traits, much like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory where the joke is on the neurodivergent individual, not the world itself. Eventually, Bella does learn to hide her neurodivergent traits well and fit into a neurotypical’s definition of what ‘normal’ behaviour is. As someone with high-functioning autism, I’ll recommend those on the spectrum proceed with caution.

All in all, Poor Things is no ‘feminist Frankenstein masterpiece’. While the film is an excellent coming-of-age fairytale, it does come across as creepy male sexuality in the initial scenes — a feeling hard to shake off even as we see Bella reclaim her bodily autonomy.

Poor Things is available for purchase on YouTube India and Google Play Movies.