I saw Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things" in the theater. I hesitated to do so because although I've really enjoyed the Lobster and the Favourite, I thought - based on some reviews I had read - that Poor Things would make heavy use of the known trope "Born Sexy Yesterday", and another one I like to call "Hot Fair Slut". Unfortunately, I'm not a famous media personality with enough clout to coin new trope names, so "Hot Fair Slut" is as unlikely to catch on as "Grimdark Preach" which I keep pushing in discussions both online and AFK as soon as I get a chance.
People tend to think that only stories written by authors who see themselves as fighting for good (whether that be leftist social justice values or conservative Christianity or something else) ever get preachy. But there are many dark stories where the author shouts at you through a megaphone "did you think the world was just and filled with honestly good people? You're wrong! And I'm here to tell you how wrong you are!" Cue plotlines about how naïve goody-two-shoes come to see the error of their ways and reform and turn cynical like you ought to.
We need a name for this phenomenon, and my suggestion is Grimdark Preach.
Anyway. Back to Poor Things and the tropes I worried would appear in it!
Born Sexy Yesterday: A sexy woman is either literally born/created very recently, or she's lived for longer but in a different world (fairyland, different planet, etc.), making her a newcomer among us. Because she doesn't know shit about our world, and have no basis for comparison, she's super impressed by the first dude she comes across and falls for him. Mr. Average gets the woman of his dreams, because she fails to realize that he is average!
Hot Fair Slut: You know how misogynists rant about "Stacys"? (TBF, they might have come up with a new name by the time I write this blogpost - I don't keep up with their antiques.) A "Stacy" is a hot slut whose greatest crime isn't sleeping around per se, but the fact that she doesn't want to sleep with the men who complain about her. When a woman sleeps around already, it's just not fair that she won't sleep with everyone!
Of course, in real life, it's pretty uncommon to fancy precisely every person you come across, or even every person of a certain gender. Whether you're strictly demisexual or happily promiscuous, it's certainly more common to have some kind of preferences, be sexually attracted to some people and not to others. But since this is unfair in the eyes of misogynistic entitled men, we see plenty of fictional women without these pesky preferences. Hot, slutty women who'll happily sleep with any man they come across. See, for instance, the planet Risa in Star Trek. TBF, they pay lip-service to Risa being a gender-neutral sexy paradise where female crew members can fuck around as much as the men, and where the inhabitants are happily horny and not the least bit exploited. But there's still an overall emphasis of "any man can go there and get a hot babe - no man will be rejected, nor hit on by older or uglier women". Which always makes the place feel kinda iffy. And there are far worse examples than this in fiction.
Some stuff I had read about Poor Things made me worry that it would feature both BSY and HFS. But I was wrong.
On to the actual plot of the movie. Spoilers ahead. And, like, all the trigger warnings for people who need them, I guess.
Godwin "God" Baxter is a mad scientist, like his father before him. He was also his father's guinea pig - his dad used to operate on him, take out organs just to see which are necessary for survival, and overall, God looks more like a traditional movie version of Frankenstein's monster than Frankenstein himself. He's disfigured and castrated and only survives by hooking himself up to various machines of his own invention, but can't bring himself to condemn his father - you see, it was for the good of science!
He teaches physiology and medicine at a university in a bizarre steampunky version of Victorian London, and hires bullied student (he's noticeably poorer than his classmates) Max McCandles to be his assistant. God explains that he cares for Bella, a young woman recovering after serious brain damage, and he needs Max to observe and make notes of her progress.
Bella is played by stunning Emma Stone, but immediately deconstructs the whole Born Sexy Yesterday trope for us viewers by not only doing baby stuff traditionally considered sexy in grown women (such as vaguely toddlerish speech and body language, looking at you Leeloo from the Fifth Element - I hate the Fifth Element so much - and tons of other fictional examples), but also throwing food around and pissing on the floor.
Eventually Max suspects that there's more to Bella than God has told him, and demands to know the truth. Okay, says God, fine! It's actually a real sunshine story.
You see, he stumbled upon this heavily pregnant woman who had committed suicide via drowning. He brought her home and noticed that there remained some electricity in her brain, meaning she was revivable. But he decided against it, because if she wanted to die, he should respect her autonomy. However! The baby's brain was alive and well, so he decided to stick the baby brain in the adult body and make a brand new creature instead.
God is such an interesting character because he does have a conscience and he does try to do the right thing and be ethical. But given his background, he's not (generously put) very good at it.
This is a fantastical movie in many ways. You gotta accept that biology works differently from real life. (See Bella's entire creation.) Bella's mental development - I guess because of her adult body - goes much faster than that of a real baby. But she remains weird by regular societal standards. It's also a really weird situation, where Max and Bella hardly ever leave the mad scientist's house. God gets the idea that Max and Bella should get married and live with him forever, and they both agree. He draws up a contract that will legally bind them to do that, but then Bella runs away with Duncan the lawyer (a fun and over-the-top-sleazy Mark Ruffalo) who falls for her Born Sexy Yesterday charms (she's stopped throwing food on people and pissing herself at this point).
They travel around in amazingly bizarre steampunk-versions of European cities. Bella is, initially, thrilled by seeing the world and having lots of sex. However, their relationship soon begins to unravel. Bella isn't some loyal puppy-dog like Leeloo (I hate that movie so much! ). She fucks other people. She tries to punch a screaming baby. She dances and talks in embarrassing ways. She gives away Duncan's gambling money in a fit of compassion after seeing poor people for the first time. Eventually, when they're starving in Paris, she gets a job at a brothel. At this point, it's revealed that Bella does have preferences - she thinks that much (though not all) of the brothel sex sucks. Nevertheless, for various reasons, she decides to stick it out.
Even though Bella, in her typical hyper-rational way, explains to Duncan that her new job is good for their relationship, since she appreciates sex with Duncan more when she's got those crappy sexual experiences to compare it with, Duncan gets super upset and leaves. And then he comes back again and wails beneath her balcony that she's the love of his life and he wants her back. This previously irredeemable fuckboy even wants to marry her! However, at this point, Bella has concluded that (in her words) an unconventional and experimental woman like herself would need an open-minded and forgiving husband, and Duncan is none of that. Goodbye!
So, so much happens in this movie. I'm not gonna recount the entire plot or spoil everything. It's got marvelous visuals, it's frequently laugh-out-funny, but it's also, at heart, a genuine feel-good movie.
Bella, God and Max form a kind dysfunctional family, where God the father figure seems to do his best, but given his own horribly traumatic childhood, he can't help but passing on lots of shit to his "children".
However, he does realize, towards the end of his life, that his own father had been terrible. And Bella calls him out on how he's, well, played God with his creations. And then, after many morbid and bizarre twists and turns, we're finally treated to some sort of reconciliation and a happy ending. (Except for that poor goat! If you've seen the movie, you know what I mean. The goat did not deserve his fate)
I rarely like feelgood stuff. It often feels too soppy, and like serious problems are too easily glossed over. For instance, I enjoyed the over-the-top craziness of "Everything, Everywhere, All at once", but really felt that way about the ending - the mum-daughter relationship seemed terrible, but in the end we kinda gloss over how bad it is.
Poor Things, on the other hand, takes everything up to eleven and beyond, including the relationship problems. There's no shying away from how grotesque God and Bella's "family" is, and yet - at the end of the day, they're still family.
Best feel-good movie ever!
