Poor Things premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival in September 2023, where it won the Golden Lion. It was released in the U.S. by Searchlight Pictures later that year. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and adapted by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel (many critics have noted the film may have better if directed by a woman), it stars Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, a woman brought back to life by a scientist after suicide. What follows is a travelogue of sex, philosophy, and formal rebellion set inside surrealist-Victorian design. The film is about a woman regaining and remaking her agency—through sex, through experience, through language. But it’s written by a man and directed by a man.
The film’s tone is blunt and strange. There are grotesque flourishes, deadpan line delivery, absurdly choreographed sex scenes, and a lot of walking with purpose. Robbie Ryan shot the film on 35mm, using wide-angle lenses and distorted compositions. The look is artificial on purpose. Lisbon is purple. The London skies are matte gray. Interiors are symmetrical, colored like dollhouses. At least three scenes feel like they take place inside a Fabergé egg.
It’s also funny. Lanthimos directs the actors to stay flat, even in scenes that would normally ask for performance. Emma Stone plays Bella with physical looseness and verbal certainty. Her line delivery makes punchlines sound like medical diagnoses. There’s slapstick, too—people fall, writhe, burst out of doors.
It’s not a perfect film. At times, Poor Things feels more like a set than a story. Every wallpaper, every shoe, every cloud is designed to be looked at. The production design is so front-and-center, it starts to eclipse the characters who are meant to move through it. There’s a kind of overproduction that kicks in when a film knows how good it looks.
And for all the film’s talk about bodily freedom and agency, it still lives inside a man’s version of that idea. Directed by a woman, it might have landed differently. Not better or worse, just closer. Closer to what the character is reaching for. Or what she’s escaping.
Still, it’s hard to be mad at this time. This is a film that’s funny and beautiful and strange and not trying to sell action figures. It’s not chasing a franchise or ironing itself flat for the algorithm. It’s an original, with weird timing and awkward sex and art direction that makes you squint.
