Bella Baxter knows what she wants.
What does she want? Well, that depends on the day.
Breaking crockery can be fun. Nuts are awfully tasty. Stabbing out the eyes of a nearby corpse? Delightful. She enjoys what most any young child might enjoy, if given access to crockery and nuts and dead bodies.
But Bella’s not a child. Not fully a child, at least. She is, rather, an experiment.
Not so long ago, the brilliant-but-ethically-indifferent Dr. Godwin Baxter found a young, pregnant, freshly dead woman floating in the Thames River. But the baby inside was still—barely—alive.
What an opportunity! Dr. Baxter thought. And he did what any brilliant-but-ethically-indifferent doctor would do under such circumstances: He brought the corpse home, removed the baby and transplanted the still-living baby’s brain into the body of its dead mother. A bit of chemistry and a few electrical shocks later, and voila! Bella Baxter, everybody.
Granted, it’s not easy to handle a toddler going through her terrible twos in the body of a full-grown woman. And in truth, Godwin could use another set of eyes to track Bella’s progress. So he brings in Max McCandles, a young student of his whose brain (Godwin praises) is straining toward mediocrity. Both are committed to tracking this very lively experiment.
But Godwin, despite his efforts to keep an objective distance, sees Bella as something more than just a breathing scientific inquiry. He feels almost like a father to her. As such, he wants to keep her safe. And that means keeping her with him at all times.
But Bella Baxter knows what she wants. And as her brain matures, she wants more than she used to. She wants to explore the world, explore her own freedom, and explore the pleasures that both might offer.
Girls grow up so fast these days.
[Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections.]
Bella comes into the world with a fully formed body but a blank slate of a brain. The former can be a problem, but the latter allows her to approach her Victorian-era world with innocence, curiosity and honesty. And while all three characteristics get her into trouble (on screen and in this review), those core attributes are indeed wonderful things.
But perhaps Bella’s greatest virtue is her fierce sense of independence.
The world in which Bella moves is not always kind to young, spirited ladies, and Bella often lands in the company of rather domineering men. One even claims ownership of her. Well, Bella makes it clear to each that she’s not having it. She speaks her mind and, very often, she speaks the truth—exposing the insecurities and weaknesses and even cruelty that can lurk in these men’s souls.
Bella can also be deeply compassionate. Sheltered for much of her life—first by the well-meaning Godwin and then by Godwin’s bad-boy attorney, Duncan Wedderburn—she’s determined to see the real world. And when she sees how brutal that world can be, she’s moved to give a great deal of money to ease the suffering she’s witnessed. (Technically, it’s someone else’s money, but the sentiment is praiseworthy.)
While Poor Things is certainly a feminist fable, the men here are not uniformly bad. Godwin is an unusual and, in many ways, flawed father figure—but Bella loves him deeply, and he’s always done his best to keep her safe. Max grows deeply attached to Bella, and he’s always looking out for her well-being.
When Godwin begins talking with Max about his (ahem) special experiment, he asks Max if he’s a religious man.
“I believe in God,” Max says.
“Me?” Godwin asks, “Or the deity?”
That’s no throwaway joke.
Godwin does not see himself as trying to unseat the Almighty with his experiments. He seems to not think much about God at all. But the movie wants us to be mindful of his role as Bella’s “creator” throughout the film. Not only does Bella call him “God” frequently, but refers to him as “my God,” which carries a bit more blasphemous pop to it.
Interestingly, Godwin’s “creation” is ultimately treated as a sort of demon by some. Duncan Wedderburn (the attorney who spirits Bella away) calls her a succubus—a sexually tempting demonic entity—half in jest at the time. But ultimately, he cowers before her. (He suggests that Bella might’ve been a punishment for his sins, too.) “Do not cast your eyes on me, you demon!” he says. Another character tells her that “Jesus Christ Himself would probably beat your head in with a bat.”
Bella works as a prostitute for a time, and one of her customers is an embarrassed-looking priest. A wedding ceremony takes place in a lavish church. There are references to England being a “Christian nation,” and because of it, suicide is treated as a form of lunacy.
So. It’d be difficult to overstate the level of nudity and sexual content we see here. The film may have the most skin in any film I’ve ever reviewed. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go into a lot of detail. But here’s a hint of what you can expect.
Bella spends a great deal of the film in various stages of undress. She’s topless in several scenes, and moviegoers will be confronted with Bella fully nude a time or two. In many of those scenes, she’s engaged in various sexual acts with a number of partners (including one woman). Most of those partners expose at least their buttocks to the camera, but a couple of scenes do involve the shadowy appearance of male genitals, as well.
In at least one instance, a father brings his underage boys into Bella’s brothel room to (the father says) observe and learn. (When the man has trouble climaxing, Bella addresses the boys directly—offering a couple of tips to complete the deed.) We see one or two sexual fetishes play out on screen as well.
Bella’s not the only woman who exposes skin. When she works as a Parisian prostitute, her supervising madame forces her employees to display themselves for paying customers: Sex workers wear garb that bare and highlight their breasts.
Bella also spends a great deal of time pleasuring herself (including while seated at the dinner table), and she speaks quite frankly about that act as well. She and another woman quip about their partners’ genitals. She asks an elderly lady how often she has sex, and when the lady replies it’s been decades, Bella’s horrified. That leads to a conversation about masturbation. Bella and others discuss sex, including specific sexual acts, frequently.
Bella plays with a male corpse’s sexual anatomy. Godwin says that he cannot engage in sex. A servant of his complains when Bella grabs her crotch. Duncan Wedderburn brags about his sexual prowess (a boast that, Bella discovers later, is well founded).
Max kisses Bella: She approves, but she comments on his technique. Godwin encourages Max to propose to Bella. Max would like to, but he had thought that Godwin might have created Bella as a sexual plaything for himself. Godwin explains that he’s incapable of having sex.
The woman who becomes Bella commits suicide by jumping off a bridge. We see the deed in flashback a few times, along with her corpse floating in the river. We see a flashback to part of her operation at Godwin’s hands (wherein Godwin removed her brain and transplanted another), along with clinical narration of the procedure. Bella bears scars from the operation, both along the back of her neck and on her belly.
Godwin is a doctor and medical professor: We see him lead an anatomy class wherein the cadaver’s flesh is splayed open, and the torso’s cavity is exposed: He’s asking one of his students to put the body’s organs back where they belong (with one of them holding the man’s liver, apparently).
Godwin works in a laboratory at home as well, operating on various people with varying degrees of success. (In one scene, it seems as though someone’s head is on fire—though the patient, if alive, doesn’t seem to pay much attention, and Godwin and Max treat it as if it was a common occurrence). When an infantile Bella walks into the laboratory and asks if she can use a knife, Godwin tells her yes, but only on dead things. She walks over to a corpse and stabs it repeatedly and grotesquely in the eye sockets.
A rich man whom Bella meets is known for his cruelty. He carries a gun with him to protect himself from his own servants; one of them tellingly has an arm in a cast. He points that gun at a butler and jokingly prepares to sic his huge hound on his maid. (The floor and much of the décor of this man’s mansion is, fittingly, blood red.
We learn that Godwin’s father was also a scientist, and Godwin was his favorite subject. Godwin often mentions, in passing, how his father’s own experiments mangled his body, including the virtual destruction of his genitals and the removal of his digestive system. His face is hideously scarred—more evidence, presumably, of his dad’s experiments.
Men get into fights. Bella struggles against Godwin and Max and ultimately must be chloroformed into unconsciousness. Bella breaks loads of dishes and household knickknacks—sometimes to show her displeasure, sometimes to get her way, sometimes just for fun. From a distance, we appear to see dead babies in a ditch.
The f-word is uttered nearly 25 times, the s-word once and the c-word five times. We also hear “a–” and “b–ch” once each. God’s name is misused five times, and Jesus’ name is abused twice.
While traveling with Duncan, Bella discovers the appeal of alcohol. She pours herself a couple of shots and initially seems to dislike the taste. By the third, though, she appreciates it. The next time we see her, she’s slumped against a wall, barely conscious.
Duncan drinks heavily, too, and at one point passes out on his bed. Wine is consumed with dinner.
Characters smoke—both tobacco and, it would appear, marijuana.
As mentioned, Godwin lost much of his digestive organs to his father’s experiments. He wanted to know whether they were necessary, and (Godwin says) he discovered that they were. As such, when he eats, he’s tethered to a series of burbling tubes and flasks. And when the meal is concluded, he lets out a long, loud belch that expels a murky bubble from his mouth.
Godwin lies, repeatedly, to Bella about how she came to be. When Bella leaves, he creates another such creature—this time doing his best to distance himself from her emotionally to keep the “experiment” pure.
We hear a reference to a weak bladder.
Poor Things has been called a feminist Frankenstein, and there’s a lot of truth to that. Both stories feature scientists who are, in some respects, playing God. Both feature stitched-together creations trying to make their way through the world. And in many respects, it’s a lavish feast of filmmaking. The sets and costumes are sumptuous, the writing is witty, the acting is often sublime.
But man, does this film have problems.
Sure, there’s Poor Things’ obvious content issues: The gurgly exposed organs, the machine-gun drone of profanity, the relentless nudity, the obsession with sex.
But the problems go deeper.
In Mary Shelley’s original novel Frankenstein, the monster was a tragic figure—one that inspired both pity and revulsion. Shelley suggested the man-made monster was a poor copy of God-made man: “God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance” the monster himself said. And even though he was well-read and well-spoken, the monster was starved for love and acceptance.
The famous 1931 movie turned the monster into a mute, hulking beast—but one of curious pathos. But one message we learn from both is simply this: Don’t play God. Because when you try, things go poorly.
But in Poor Things, the message is flipped. Here, Godwin’s creation is, the movie suggests, better than we are. Unalloyed by societal pressures or norms, she is more free, more honest, more true, perhaps even more loving than we are.
That’s particularly true in the realm of sex. Bella has no inhibitions, no mystical notions of physical intimacy. Sex is not something to be treasured, but something to be shared—perhaps with as many people as possible. Poor Things echoes every pop star who takes off her clothes for the camera and says it’s an act of empowerment.
That’s an issue, obviously—but when you look at the movie’s setup, it gets creepier.
Remember that Bella lives because her infant’s brain lived—survived Bella’s act of self-destruction. (You could slather on either a pro-life or pro-choice message in that little plot twist—an unborn baby that obviously lives apart from its mother, or a mother who needs her baby to die in order to truly live.)
And while the story suggests that Bella’s baby brain is maturing rapidly, here’s an important salient fact: When Bella becomes sexually active, she’s still mastering basic skills like walking. She may have the body of a woman, but she also has the brain of a child. And that brain is the seat of who we are—the receptacle for our thoughts and feelings, the tool through which we make our choices and shape how we see the world … and the world sees us.
When you take a serious look at what Poor Things is telling us—and Poor Things encourages us to do so—we don’t just grapple with the themes it wants us to grapple with. It confronts us with an unintended-but-important reality: Bella isn’t an ideal pure, liberated woman. She’s the victim of, essentially, child abuse. She was taken from her home before she was mature enough to make such a choice. She moved into a brothel when her brain was still maturing. While in the real world, if someone of a single-digit brain age would become a prostitute, we’d view it as heinous underage sex trafficking. In the movie it’s presented as a viable career choice.
Poor Things gives us a compelling, unique protagonist who explores the world with urgent curiosity and innocence. The movie itself takes its own chances, exploring its themes with creativity and color. But Poor Things? Poor Choices, more like.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
