Yorgos Lanthimos directed Poor Things from a screenplay by Tony McNamara, working from Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a young woman in Victorian London whose body is reanimated by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter, played by Willem Dafoe. The film runs 141 minutes and is a co-production between Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Godwin builds Bella’s mind from the brain of the fetus she was carrying when she died by suicide, leaping off Tower Bridge. So she starts the film with an infant’s understanding inside a grown woman’s body. Dafoe plays Godwin with a scarred face and a patience that reads as love.
Trailer, via SearchlightPictures.
Max McCandles and the Proposal
Godwin brings in the medical student Max McCandles, played by Ramy Youssef, to record how Bella behaves. Her vocabulary improves. She shows childlike wonder at the world. With Godwin’s encouragement, Max falls in love with her and proposes.
Bella says yes. Then she discovers masturbation and sexual pleasure, and runs off to Lisbon with Duncan Wedderburn, a debauched lawyer played by Mark Ruffalo.
Duncan Wedderburn in Lisbon
In Lisbon the two have near-constant intercourse, because Bella has no understanding of anything beyond physical pleasure. A fellow hotel guest addresses her as “Victoria Blessington.” As Bella becomes difficult for Duncan to control, he smuggles her onto a cruise ship.
On board, she befriends two passengers who open her mind to philosophy. Duncan tries to stunt her growth to no avail, and indulges in drinking and gambling.
Alexandria and the Crew
At a stop in Alexandria, Bella sees the suffering of the poor and becomes distraught. She wants to help. So she hands Duncan’s winnings to unscrupulous members of the crew, who falsely promise to give the money to the poor.
Unable to afford the rest of the trip, Bella and Duncan are dropped off at Marseille and make their way to Paris, penniless.
Bella Baxter in Paris
Seeking money and accommodation, Bella begins working at a brothel. Enraged, Duncan breaks down, and Bella abandons him. At the brothel she comes under the tutelage of Madame Swiney, played by Kathryn Hunter, and begins a relationship with the fellow prostitute Toinette, played by Suzy Bemba.
Stone said she was drawn to the idea of a woman reborn with a liberated mindset free from societal pressures.
She was the most joyous character in the world to play, because she has no shame about anything. She’s new, you know?
Stone took dance lessons to prepare for the role and accidentally dyed her hair black. Lanthimos liked the contrast between the dark hair and her fair complexion.
The Cast Around Stone
Dafoe entered negotiations to join the cast in March 2021. In April, Youssef was in talks. Both were confirmed in May, along with Ruffalo and Jerrod Carmichael. Christopher Abbott was cast in September. Margaret Qualley and Suzy Bemba were cast in November, with Hunter also revealing she had a role.
The cast includes Abbott as Alfie Blessington, Carmichael as Harry Astley, Vicki Pepperdine as Mrs. Prim, Hanna Schygulla as Martha Von Kurtzroc, and Qualley as Felicity. Youssef said he and Dafoe attended mortician school to prepare. Dafoe reflected on the “experimental theater games” Lanthimos assigned the cast before filming.
Venice, Searchlight, and the Box Office
Poor Things premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2023, where it won the Golden Lion. It was released theatrically in the United States on December 8, 2023, and in Ireland and the United Kingdom on January 12, 2024, by Searchlight Pictures.
It grossed over $117 million worldwide on a budget of $35 million, becoming Lanthimos’s highest-grossing film.
The Awards
The film was named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. It received four wins at the 96th Academy Awards, two at the 81st Golden Globe Awards, and five at the 77th British Academy Film Awards. Stone won Best Actress at each ceremony.
The published critical score stands at 8.8/10, with a Metacritic score of 88/100.
Three things carry this film’s reputation, in order of how much they actually matter:
- Stone’s Bella, the reason a premise this strange holds together at all.
- The screenplay, which keeps Bella’s liberation grounded in events rather than slogans.
- The production design, which builds a Victorian London that never existed.
The awards record backs the first of those. Best Actress at three separate ceremonies is consensus, not sentiment. The box office total matters less, since a wide release and a name cast explain much of it. What matters more is that a film this odd — a reanimation story with a brothel act and a philosophy seminar on a cruise ship — found the audience it did.
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