Poor Things (2023)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costumes, and Best Hair and Makeup    This is my last Best Picture nominee.  Content warning:  medical gore, body horror, animal death (frog), suicide

Pre-eminent surgeon Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) hires one of his med students, Archie (Ramy Youssef), to help him document an on-going experiment:  Bella (Emma Stone), an adult woman with the brain of a child.  Literally.  He found a freshly dead body and swapped the brain with an infant's.  Bella is learning and growing without all that silly unnecessary stuff like puberty.  In fact, one of her biggest revelations is that she can pleasure herself, an activity she immensely enjoys.  Godwin worries that she will become overwhelmed or not accepted by the world so he pressures Archie to sign a marriage contract stating that Bella can never leave, only to have the disreputable lawyer, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), abscond with her for a fuckfest across Europe.  

There is a LOT going on here.  First, we have to address the Born Sexy Yesterday trope.  For those that don't know, BSY is a deeply regressive male fantasy where the protagonist of a story is a sexually mature woman with the mind of a child.  I'm paraphrasing but generally, the Woman-Child is some kind of highly specific badass (usually combat) but completely unaware of the ways of the world and deeply reliant on the first man she sees.  He can be aggressively average but to the Woman-Child he is extraordinary because she has no frame of reference.  You can see how this would appeal to a certain sub-set of rejection-phobic insecure dudes.  

Poor Things manages to subvert the BSY trope eventually by having Bella continue to grow mentally and be exposed to new ideas and experiences but it is a near thing.

Obviously, Frankenstein was a major influence but I would put forward that this should be compared to Bride of Frankenstein instead.  Godwin Baxter is the product of his father's experimentation and he, in turn, seeks to create something in his own likeness that will love him, misshapen as he is.  Bella is a better creation, beautiful but still monstrous in the sense that she is outside of societal norms.  Like the book Frankenstein's monster, she ventures into the world but not hidden.  She can outwardly pass.  

Here's where we venture into more spoiler-y bits in the name of I Need to Word Vomit These Thoughts So They Will Stop Bouncing Around My Skull.  Bella isn't a woman.  She is a construct.  This is an important distinction because at no point is she treated the way a Victorian woman would be treated until the very end when she returns to her pre-suicide life.  She is basically immune to exploitation until then.  Even when she becomes a prostitute, at no point does a man offer her violence or violation.  Frankly, that's more unrealistic than the goose-dog.  

So you can see that this film is designed to launch a thousand think pieces.  Latimos is not my favorite director.  I can't get past his personal signatures of extreme forced isolation and animal cruelty, though both of those are much tamer here so maybe he's working through it.  

Visually, this is a stunning movie.  The black-and-white pieces are lovely and rich in their starkness while the color segments are fantastical whimsy.  And the sleeves!  If this doesn't win Best Costumes, I will be absolutely gobsmacked.  I'd like to see Gladstone win for representational reasons but I would not be mad if Stone won.  She gave a ferocious performance.  Ruffalo's accent bothered the shit out of me and I am still Team Sterling K. Brown or We Burn It All Down.  

Honestly, I would be a little vexed if this won Best Picture over Barbie, since it's very nearly the same concept except Artsy and choosing it implies that Barbie is less serious because it's pink, not black.  Barbie isn't going to win because it's already being minimized with only six nominations and a snub for Gerwig but to see Latimos win by basically doing her story but louder would be an absolute kick in the face.

It's currently only available to rent digitally but it'll probably hit (sigh) Max in a month or so.