Poor Things (film)

[TinselAngel]

Has anybody here seem Poor Things yet?

I went to see it this afternoon and sat slightly horrified in a cinema full of chortling people, about Emma Stone's character being relentlessly exploited by men but this being portrayed as not being altogether a bad thing.

I don't think Alasdair Gray would have claimed to be the world's leading feminist but I think at least he was aware of misogyny and double standards. A History Maker is an interesting book too, set in a matriarchal society. It's worth knowing that he was a bit of a contrarian and might have been writing in a modernist, anti-realist style to draw attention to societal norms and their flaws.

Here ends my lecture 😂 - sorry!

I might be interested in reading the book. It sounds like it has more layers to it.

I've also worked with children and young adults with neurological injury, and that's what the trailers made me think of immediately. Given that women and children with disability are often sexually abused, I definitely have no desire to watch a film based on an erotic and 'clever' presentation of that abuse as if it's not something happening all around us every day. Don't feel any need to watch the film first before deciding that the premise is repulsive.

I really enjoyed it. I felt like it was laughing at men really - they’re all pathetic, vile, needy creatures which Bella exposes with her frank voice.

Men’s weaknesses are put on display constantly - they only want Bella for one thing, even “nice” Max who proclaims he loves her when he can’t even have a proper conversation with her - and taking control of her own situation as her intellect expands and uses men as they use her; e.g. Wedderburn warns her not to fall in love with him and has a reputation as a user etc. but he makes himself crazy when she doesnt fall in love with him and is only using him “for now. For fun”. All of them know her brain has been replaced with that of a child but they don’t care. She has a desirable female body, who cares about her mind. That’s what I took from it.

All of the control and imprisonment and expectation that women’s bodies aren’t their own…I thought it was great.

@Babla would that be as empowering as "sex work" (not work at all, in fact cash for rape) or porn . If it's like the book, it sounds rank and Gray spent half his life pissed as a fart up the West End of Glasgow just like most of his adoring devotees. ( I fully expect this to be removed, but needs to be said ).

This is a good post and I agree with much of it. I didn't hate it though... I thought it illustrated all of your points fairly well, therefore a good film. Sure, lots of people will watch and laugh and say 'ooo pretty' but lots of us haven't - it's provided lots of food for thought. I'd be really interested in a q&a with the director who I'm sure will have considered all this and more.

. If it's like the book, it sounds rank and Gray spent half his life pissed as a fart up the West End of Glasgow just like most of his adoring devotees. ( I fully expect this to be removed, but needs to be said ).

But it's not the book it's the film, I haven't read the book I've seen the film. As for it needs to be said.. why? Why is the author's life in any way relevant

I really enjoyed it. I felt like it was laughing at men really - they’re all pathetic, vile, needy creatures which Bella exposes with her frank voice.

Agree with this.. uplifting and empowering

The Times Critic was expecting to enjoy it but didn't. Her husband loved it it

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poor-things-and-the-trouble-with-too-much-sex-2dcgdctzm

https://archive.ph/V8NKx

At least the review says where they got the baby's brain from (i had been wondering).

I haven't seen it and I don't fancy it. I'm not much of a one for subtext. Is it really that different from the book (not that I've read that either)?

@Cancelledcurio can confirm.

I'm glad I started this thread. I'm pleased it's not just me.

I was planning on going to see this later in the week based on the trailer, which looks fun and arty, and because I enjoyed the director’s previous films. I’d seen no hint of how the plot develops and I have no interest whatsoever in prolonged sex scenes between older uglier men and compliant younger women. It’s hardly original is it?
Thanks for the excellent review @HorribleNecktie

@Babla because the film is based on the book and is very much reflective of the misogynist rantings of a pissed up luvvie which was seen by many as great literature when it was published. Clue : is this what we should expect as an example of great art? If so, maybe we should raise our standards a bit more?

Sorry click too soon. Let's just be honest then and say what it is , a horrible wee sexual fantasy film for overgrown arts student ladz.

But you haven't seen it?

This is closest to how I felt about it. And the man sitting nearby me in the audience was laughing at the same things I laughed at, ie pathetic behaviour from men and how Bella cut them down or ignored them. It's meant to make you uncomfortable and think about how infantilised the "ideal" woman is and consider how men behave and how women are expected to behave. It's science fiction, to cast a thought provoking mirror back on society - not a description of what reality should look like?

Ah that's the source of the 'feminist take on frankenstein' quote! As a pp said, bit misjudged considering!

Edited: doh, read to the end and the reviewer doesn't see it as feminist! Good review, and thanks for the share 😀

This Tom Shone review says
'Poor Things is meant as a feminist remix of Frankenstein — complete with in-the-know winks to the lives of Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft — but it also does double duty as Stone’s surreal, peeled-eyeball account of what it feels like to be repackaged into a Hollywood girl-next-door poppet. For the twist is that every male Svengali figure in Bella’s life, even the ones who want to liberate her sexually, turn out to want to control her.'

It may have been meant that way, but it doesn't sound like it managed it.

https://archive.ph/FlR8J

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-best-films-of-2024-so-far-the-critics-verdict-g0xq83lct

I disagree that the sex scenes were ‘male gaze’, whatever that means. They show a woman with a boy-like figure, pubic hair, a bit dishevelled/scruffy looking, getting satisfied in bed and the man not able to match her sexual appetite (there’s a joke where she asks to ‘go again’ while the male lead is all sexed out).

It was hardly Margot Robbie in Wolf of Wall Street, was it.

I hate the idea that it's a baby's brain. Unless that brain has been in her body for 16 years before she has sex it's paedophilia and rape.

The whole 'the brain matures in some ways faster than others' sounds like a really really tenuous argument for justifying the idea that children's brains can in some situations consent to sex. Is there any evidence this is what would happen? I doubt it a LOT.

Really dodgy MAP-like stuff. The brain develops as a whole and this is an extremely unappetising thought experiment by people who clearly like the idea of having sex with someone with a baby's brain and are dressing this up as art.

Quite a lot of red flags, no matter how nicely it's produced.

Yes, I don't know a single woman whose life choices are purely motivated by sex.

I don't understand why, if just lack of knowledge around social norms is what they were going for, they could not have had it be an adult brain that had somehow been 'wiped' in certain ways but was at least mature.

Why did it have to be a baby?

I really despair of society at times.

Did it have her learning to talk, and the journey from incontinence
to continence etc as well? Because a lot of that is social norms we're taught - not to just shit ourselves when we feel like it e.g. at the table at breakfast time. Or was it just the sex?

So this is your view of the film but you haven't actually seen it? I disagree completely and still don't see why you think we should judge the film in light of the book and the author

The baby’s brain was used because it was her baby that she was pregnant with at the time of her death - all explained in the film.

Yes she had to learn everything from continence to eating to reading to speaking etc. - all explained in the film.

I feel I need to say this one last time for those that are repeatedly talking about pedophiliia in a film that they have not seen. She was given the brain transplant at the start and this brain matured, she learned and matured. she did not constantly have the brain or mind of a baby. There was no pedophilia, there were predatory men though.

I thought this thread was going to be a good discussion but the amount of knee jerk reactions from people who haven’t seen the film is what I’d expect from Daily Mail readers.

What stage of the film would you say she began to really have the capacity to consent?

I don't think she had anything approaching an adult brain until the very end.

I thought this thread was going to be a good discussion but the amount of knee jerk reactions from people who haven’t seen the film is what I’d expect from Daily Mail readers.

I don't think insults like that really sting on FWR any more.

Aw noes, have we been clocked reading the wrong paper again?! What a bunch of daft wee wummin, eh? With our tedious focus on consent.