It's like a weird mixture of Frankenstein, Candide, and Polyanna... An odyssey of growth and self-discovery for a woman who was created by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) by taking an infant's brain and transplanting it into its recently deceased mother's body. As the infant brain grows and develops, catching up with its adult form, a new person, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) emerges.
When she starts feeling trapped by her "father" and his plan to betroth her to his assistant, Bella runs away with a disreputable lawyer named Duncan (Mark Ruffalo) on a quest to see the rest of the world and makes it as far as the Mediterranean before her sexual relationship with Duncan loses its luster and Duncan gets increasingly possessive.
Bella's immaturity also leads her to make poor decisions, often stemming from hopeful and compassionate impulses, such as giving all of Duncan's money away to some sailors who promise to give it to the starving kids in a North African village... but of course, they will just keep that money themselves.
That act means that Duncan can no longer pay for their trip and they get stranded in Paris, where Bella goes to work as a prostitute because she likes sex and needs cash. Amusingly, it is in Paris that she also meets another prostitute who defines herself as a socialist and at one point, Bella notes that her body was now her means of production. Not sure it was intentional, but it's a good reminder that socialism is mindlessly materialistic as a philosophy.
There are a few scenes that I think may warrant some kind of culture-wars uproar, but I doubt too many of those people will bother to watch it to begin with, so who knows.
In any case, aspects of the film are about a woman choosing her own path in life while having to navigate around various men attempting to keep her all to themselves in a gilded cage... But other aspects are an exploration of competing worldviews. She is a Pollyanna-ish figure, insofar as she is innocent and optimistic, but her experiences follow the path of Candide, where at first things are good, then her view is challenged by Duncan who convinces her to ignore propriety and embrace hedonism; then her views are challenged again by a pessimist and cynic who tells her the world is nothing but suffering and she should deaden herself to feeling empathy; then she meets the brothel-owner who tells her personal suffering and degradation builds character; and finally she returns home.
At the end of the day, I'm not entirely sure what the film was trying to say, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
There's also a lot of nudity and sex that some people might find uncomfortable.
The direction, sets, cinematography, and editing are all heavily stylized and strange -- and yet at the same time, it's all masterfully done, which I guess shouldn't be surprising considering that it was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos who did The Lobster and The Favourite. Poor Things has the same off-beat vibe as those films do, and while it is pretty captivating... I'm not sure how many times I would be compelled to revisit this film.
I guess if I had to describe Poor Things in a couple of words, they would be "quirky" and "clinical", which doesn't quite seem like a good thing.
A lot of this comes down to Emma Stone's performance, which is absolutely brilliant but which depicts Bella as an anthropologist, observing, documenting, and studying the world while describing her feelings verbally, as opposed to experiencing the world and being internally affected by it. This all creates a lot of distance between me as a viewer and what's happening to her.
Yorgos reinforces this externalized viewpoint visually, often shooting establishing shots and scene transitions using fisheye lenses -- as if we're looking through a keyhole into another world.
So I find the film hard to connect with, while still being impressed by the production.
And with all that said, I'm not going to rave about how everyone else should see it so much as I'll say that it's a very odd film that may or may not be your cup of tea. If you liked other of Yorgos' films, you'll probably like this. If you enjoy Tim Burton or Spike Jonze films, you might enjoy this. If you enjoy off-beat dramas or comedies that make you think but which don't shove a conclusion in your face, you might enjoy this.
I'm probably gonna need another few days to decide how I feel.