Poor Things is a conspiracy to trick you into watching star/producer Emma Stone get drilled. We’re going to talk about the artistic merits and its place in the culture, but make no mistake – director/producer Yorgos Lanthimos and Stone made this primarily as a big porno.
London- A deformed surgeon called Godwin “God” Baxter (Willem Dafoe) has surgically transplanted a late-stage fetal brain into the body of a grown woman, a creation whom he calls Bella Baxter (Stone). Baxter almost immediately discovers masturbation and, like a child, tries to share this new joy with everyone she meets – but, like an adult, this is taken as a sexual advance. She quickly agrees to marry Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), whom God hired to study her around the clock, but just as quickly runs off to Lisbon with depraved lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo).
The plot is ripe for real-life readings about sex addiction and pedophilia, or more specifically the ethics of taking advantage of someone with a mature body but an unsound mind, but this isn’t what the film is interested in. Baxter’s consent is enthusiastic but uninformed, but it’d be more accurate to describe her behavior as ignorant and care-free than addictive – we don’t see anything like the lying, withdrawals or shirking of responsibilities you’d see from an addict. That’s partially because she’s a child and doesn’t have any responsibilities. The men who have sex with her are all predators, but it is how they prey, not the fact that they prey, that separates them in the film’s world.
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