Stone as Bella is a curious mix of unhinged and controlled. She never lets the infancy of the character become a caricature, nor does she texture her speech with that day-to-day ease of communication when she matures (does anyone in this film other than McCandles do that?), lest we forget that language for Bella is not just a pedestrian quest to do everyday things, but that she is “special”. And not just due to the peculiarity of her situation, but also because we are to believe that there is something innately, individualistically endearing about her. Through the length of the film, Bella’s richer relationships are only with men, and her evolving has to do with responding to their fantasies. The film’s initial concept starts thinning after a certain point.
Big, Baby Steps
It is refreshing to see Bella hop from one destination to another and find herself capable of engaging with sophisticated ideas, and her libidinal needs, but there is something very off about the sex here. There is no period blood in this film. Ever. It is an odd detail to never address, considering a maturity doesn’t come from any number of choiceful words this film uses for physical intimacy.
There is also the ickiness of the fact that mentally speaking, Bella is…a child. While she is able to challenge to Duncan to the point he doesn’t want to look her in the eye because he dramatically declares her to be a devil, it doesn’t erase the fact that this is a woman who is in the process of learning fifteen words per day, and still expanding her capacity to think. And then there is another rasping flaw: If we are truly to believe that Bella’s curiosity about the world is rapacious, then why does she only turn those ideas inwards? The issue here isn’t that this is narcissistic, but that this can be unimaginative.
And then there is Paris.
While the issue of sex work has even feminists divided, the film unequivocally presents the narrative of empowerment because Bella is choosing to indulge in the transaction on her own terms. Never mind that this is one of the fewer venues available for her to scrape by after Duncan snatches the money Godwin gave her. It is glaring that the economic context around it — men clearly seem to have purchasing power — is glossed over to prop up Bella’s agency as an individual. You dilute the stakes when you conveniently obliterate material context.
But I wouldn’t worry about this detail chafing to a disproportionate degree, because even at its weakest, Poor Things is a riot. Bella’s sincerity, contrasted with coded misogyny around her, makes up for a gratifying concoction, and this is arguably Lanthimos’ best film till date.