Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
Our WERRRK.com Countdown to the Oscars series ends with the film featuring the most explicit gay sex of the nominated films I’ve seen this year. Though there were other films with queer themes, there is nothing to be added to the conversation by elaborating on why I did not like them. Best Picture nominee Poor Things, on the other hand, wants a bit of a spanking.
Best Director nominee Yorgos Lanthimos takes his very own swing at the “born sexy yesterday” trope along with Best Adapted Screenplay nominee Tony McNamara, and I was left wondering what the hell happened here. The two made The Favourite together where they proved themselves to be perfectly capable of presenting human women who, even in a sexual quagmire of power and secrets, were operating outside the bounds of male desire. Of course, now that I compare the two films I see how the main tool of the women in both is sex. Sigh.
Poor Things is adapted from the 1992 book of the same name by the late Alasdair Gray and, according to an interview with McNamara on NPR’s All Things Considered, the book is actually about Scottish nationalism, but Lanthimos ditches that element in order to focus on the story of Bella Baxter. Bella (Best Actress in a Leading Role nominee Emma Stone) is a reanimated corpse whose brain was replaced with that of the fetus she was carrying when she threw herself off a bridge. Bella’s creator, God (Godwin Baxter played by Willem Dafoe), is a scientist with unorthodox practices who raises this baby as she develops inside the body of an adult. So far, I’m on board. A woman with no preconceived notions of the world who will act as she pleases? Excellent premise. Then we fall off the deep end when Bella’s main source of discovery is sex. Rather than a toddler in an oral phase, Bella goes through a long vaginal phase. True, sexual development is fundamental. However, it has taken on an outsize role in Bella’s story, especially in light of the fact that she seems to have no feelings at all whatsoever about the men she sleeps with. Lanthimos’s movie asks the question “what if Frankenstein’s monster was a girl” and attempts to dress his disappointing answer in beakers and bows—yes, she’s horny, but it’s for science!
Oh, (straight, cis) men. Why must your idea of female liberation be so self-serving? Time and again you float the notion that if women had true freedom, the first thing we’d choose is to fuck every man in sight. When you conjure a world where women have the rights of men, you somehow still place yourselves at the very center. This narcissistic framework is a toilet seat you simply will not shut no matter how many times we ask you to do so. And the reason I know you’re capable of eschewing this concept is that when you make films about men, who have the freedoms of men because they are men, they are almost never about how men fuck their way to enlightenment. Yes, sex is a part of life, but it is not the foundation of all human interaction and it is not the sole thing that makes people complete, as you are well aware when you make films about men. Now, I am no prude. John Waters is my favorite director, for Divine’s sake. But come the fuck on, guys.
(SPOILERS AHEAD.)
And now for the gay part! If you’ve ever seen a movie where male filmmakers depict lesbian sex, what you’re about to read will shock you. The sex occurs between two gorgeous young women. And get this, they both have scant body hair, as was famously the fashion in 19th century France. This is practically a documentary, folks. When Bella takes a job as a sex worker, she falls for Toinette (Suzy Zemba), a colleague who teaches her about socialism. Women get to be their own means of production while men just get to be people. And that’s what they call equal rights. (No shade to sex workers. Take AAAAALLLLLL of their money, babes.) In the end, Bella returns home after a wide array of sexual experiences where she never once worries about getting pregnant and never once has her period. After a brief interlude as the battered wife of her pre-suicide past, Bella decides to become a doctor just like her creator. God made woman in his image after all.
The reason audiences have been able to overlook the hollow core of this film is the breathtaking visual elements by Best Cinematography nominee Robbie Ryan, Best Production Design nominees James Price and Shona Heath with Set Decoration by Zsuzsa Mihalek, and Best Costume Design nominee Holly Waddington. But a film is more than its style and appearance; a film must also be judged by the quality of the ideas it presents. Perhaps the main idea Poor Things offers is a dismal, cynical comparison between film and women; as long as it’s pretty on the outside, nothing else matters as far as the word at large is concerned.
Watch Poor Things on Hulu and in select theaters. The 96th Annual Oscars airs live on ABC on Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 7:00pm EDT / 4:00pm PDT / 11:00pm GMT / 7:00am CST.
