POOR THINGS Movie Review **SPOILER ALERT**

[Music] that's Nick and that's Joseph and today we're here to talk about poor things the E film directed by your ghost Lanos which Search light Pictures is releasing December 8th 2023 notably it won the golden line at the 2023 Venice Film Festival I think your ghost Lanos is my second favorite name my first favorite is Aki KMI okay yeah yeah finish the this director have I seen one of their films well I did have a movie night for dog tooth several many years ago on a double bill with Picnic at Hanging Rock I'm not sure if you remember those no uh but uh youing the lobster all with Colin frell mhm also a big fan of elps Colin frell returned to work with him in killing of a sacred deer with Nicole Kidman and uh of of course the favorites with Olivia Coleman's Oscar winning performance also starring Emma Stone you saw this movie at can Venice Venice they won Venice and then you watch it again with me at a screening where Willam defo talked about the film which was a lot of fun now that the actor strike is over yes but poor things the incredible tale about the Fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and Orthodox scientist Dr Godwin Baxter what's your pull quote a brilliant phenomenally performed and perverse buildings Roman Lanos transforms the Frankenstein Mythos into a supremely provocative unabashedly sex positive Vindication on the rights of woman okay mine is poor things spectacular perfectly smart funny dark and sadistic it of course is based on the 1992 publication by Alistair uh gray which I've read little book show no I I knew I uh had found a new kinship a kindred spirit when uh the hard cover copy I own has a quote on it that says work is if you live in the early days of a better Nation Oh yeah this movie was amazing yes and it's uh adapted by Tony mcnamer who wrote Cruella and uh starring emone and also the favorite for Lanos uh there are significant departures from Gray's original text but in ways that I think make the film version even more exciting I can't imagine this not being my favorite film of the year I still have like a couple more to go but the story it's pretty involved but Willam defal plays Dr Godwin Godwin Baxter and he's kind of like the doctor in Frankenstein he's a surgeon and we see well Frankenstein he's Dr Frankenstein yeah the monster is not Frankenstein I know that but anyway he's a surgeon and he plucks one of his students played by uh Ramy YF to assist him with uh a project at his home and the project is Bella played by Emma Stone MH okay so Bella appears to be well he developmentally disabled yeah they use the art word to describe her but it seems like she's very childlike and her uh movements are very uh uncoordinated and God Dr Baxter he wants this student to basically like collect information about her and he's trying to say that she suffered some injury or something and that she's trying to rehabilitate but it's obvious very quickly to the student student that something's not right because she's not allowed to go outside ever under any circumstances and other you know red flags but the student he is clearly like kind of becoming attached to Bella and all of a sudden one day God says well do you want to marry her and the student goes like is this a trick but sure I'll marry her okay under one condition you have to live here with me and the two of you can never leave it's always going to be the three of us and this fool agrees so we see a contract being written up by Mark rufalo mhm whose character's name is Duncan Duncan wbor and of course the student Ramy Yusef's character is Max mandles mandles and that's important because Bella calls him candles okay but Mark rufalo I I'm not sure what his job title is but he's constructed this contract and he is very curious about this woman who so captivating and alluring but they have to create this contract so that she can never leave them so he finds her cuz God lives in this huge castle and he sneaks up there and meets her and he is Spellbound and he tells her like let me take you away and show you a life of adventure and that appeals to her because she's growing and developing and she's never been allowed to leave the house and the first section where we see her we see that she is very restricted mhm MH so this man coming along saying he'll whisk her away is appealing it's also important to know we can get into the details but Bella has also discovered her sexuality and she is uh very curious about it so she tells her dad God that she will marry candles but first she wants to go on this adventure and God says yeah go on ahead see the world he and uh Duncan takes her to Portugal Lisbon yeah MH and she they have a lot of sex she starts to learn a lot of new things meet a lot of new people but in the process she is driving Duncan Mark rufo's character crazy and ultimately leads to him going broke because she gives all his money away which we can talk about so they end up stranded in Paris homeless MH but Bella doesn't know the difference so she's like well let me go see what I can get into and she comes across a wh house and The Madam of the wh house is standing out front and basically says Hey Girl Come On In you can make a few dollars and that's when Bella realizes like wait I love sex and I can get money for it this sounds like the perfect combination so then we get a sequence where Bella is a prostitute and it's a long sequence but she's starting to get bored with it at the same time she receives a letter from London where God is saying that he's very sick like he's going to die so she decides to go back and then she says well I'll fulfill my promise and marry candles and she finally Le learns the truth about herself which we need so the gag is Bella is not like this monster necessarily that God created from pieces in fact God looks like the monster and Bella's this pristine little angel the story behind Bella's existence is that Bella used to be a lady named Valerie start with a Victoria something Victoria I think and she committed suicide she jumped off a building landed in the water and that's when God walked upon her and saw that this woman had freshly killed herself and was very pregnant like 8 months pregnant so there was a baby in her and then the funniest line in the movie to meet is God goes while the answer was obvious I need to take the baby out of the mother and put the baby's brain in the mother's body in the mother's body because he believed that clearly this woman did not want to live so I don't want to reanimate her but give this baby a chance which is logical it it did make sense to me so when Bella when we first meet her and she's in this adult body acting like a baby it's not because like how in Frankenstein he's trying to get used to his it's because it's a baby's brain in this adult body Bella is very upset about it but then she also thanks God for giving her this chance to live this life she enjoys she Pro and then she proceeds to marry candles but before she can say I do her I guess you could say I mean ex husband shows up played by Christopher abbit mhm cuz uh Victoria whatever her name was before she committed suicide was married and he interrupts the wedding he objects and she's like well let's not get married yet I want to explore this fool and she decides to go back to him not thinking that maybe she attempted suicide for a reason I I think she knows that but she wants her curiosity won't let her she wants to know yeah so she goes back and we find out that he is vile he's like a general or I don't even know if he is I mean he could just be Colonel Sanders but he's always carrying a gun he's very violent and abusive and Bella starts to realize that she was also like that when she was with him so she's disgusted then he tells her you can never leave or I'll kill you and she's like you're going to have to kill me cuz I'm not leaving or cuz I'm not staying and that's when her husband realizes that her problem is between her legs so he schedules a clitorectomy MH and she hear overhears that so when the time comes for him to take her to do it he wants her to drink like a martini with chloroform and she takes that glass throws it in his face takes his gun shoots him in the foot and drags his ass back to God's palace I think he shoots himself in the foot he gets shot in the foot and she wants revenge on him so she removes his brain and replaces it with a goat's brain and in the end of the film is her living H happily ever after because she has studied to become a medical doctor so she's about to take her exam Godwin's left her his surgery the house so she has that she is still with candles but he understands that like he can't control her and he understands her past meaning her whoring days and while she was a prostitute she fell in love with another prostitute this black lady twanette played by Susie BBA so they're living there happily ever after she's also like while she was gone on her Adventure God and candles created another woman named Felicity played by qu who's not as she's like the base model version of Bella cuz she's not very sophisticated well it must maybe because she had a dead brain a dead adul yeah she's lame compared to Bella but they all live happily ever after in this beautiful palace this beautiful pal island of dro palace in London yeah there there is so much about this movie that's just perfect I like the writing the set design the humor it feels very it like Mary Shel Frankenstein uh mixed with uh this classic well classic Tech erotic text called Josephine mtin Bacher the story of a viones As Told by herself it feel cuz it's very provocative yes um I'm just going to go through my notes so Godwin William def's character we see him eating at the dinner table with Bella when we first sort of see them together and he's strapped to this like dialysis type machine and it's not clear what it is at first and then we see that whenever he burps he makes this awful sound like a frog croaking yes it's it's it's alarming and then he like a bubble comes out of his mouth and then it bursts and you can smell like his gases but we realize that the dialysis machine is replacing his gastric juices because the backstory to Dr Baxter is that his father was like a monster to him was doing all these experiments that's why Dr Baxter's face looks the way it does his like thumbs look weird he's a unic he doesn't have genitals um which is important to the story but um yeah we find out that his dad was like experimenting on him but Dr Baxter is interpreting that as like his dad loved him enough to experiment on him when clearly he was being severely abused to further science yeah I like that defo has approach in uh making this character uh incorporating elements of the actual Scottish author because this film is set in London the original novels in Glasgow but we see or the the unic portion is important because candles when when God asks candles do you want to marry Bella he's like well yeah but I wasn't sure if you had made her for your own sexual uses you know like I don't want to step on anyone's toes mhm and Godwin is kind of appalled like oh my gosh like you know like I'm a scientist I would never consider that but also I'm a unic and then he describes the amount of effort it would take to get him to climax which I thought was really funny but yeah it's he's that character is very interesting well he's like my paternal figures are have outweighed any of those urges so Bella we see is fixing ated on because I guess her dad SLG good is a surgeon she spends a lot of time watching him perform procedures and do experiments so she's very fixated on also cutting bodies and we get a scene where she wants to cut bodies and we hear God tell her only the dead ones and she she goes to a cadaver and we see her grab the kav's penis like oh my go she's going to cut it off but then she gets excited and starts gouging its eyes out the movie is pretty graphic it's pretty graphic yeah cuz initially it feels like more of a a horror movie uh which I don't mind but I think Emma Stone's physicality as she's developing her motor skills are pretty damn good it's brilliant because you it could easily be ridiculous caricature like yeah because she's walking around kind of like unstable like a baby but the way she does it is just so and it's so subtle how she it was almost imperceptible to me from the beginning of the movie to the end like I had to remind myself where she started because she very subtly transitions to being more refined in her motor movements and then she becomes very well read so her speech becomes uh much better but it's done in a way that is so um seamless mhm it I mean for as drawing as some of the things that happen in the film Arts very elegant yes so Dr Baxter also experiments on animals so we see that he has like hybrid creatures it's very island of Dr Moro in the way that we see like a duck dog and a pig chicken which then plays into the end when Bella turns her husband her ex uh into basically a goat uh but yeah the humor is just nonstop but it's it's very refined and even like little things when Bella says I want to go outside and God relents and says okay let's take a little trip and they get into a horse and carriage and everyone else in the town is in a horse and carriage but his horse and carriage is motorized it has an engine and a fake horse head but a well it's not it's probably a real horse's head attached to the carriage that made me laugh well just like when uh defo tells uh Ramy yusf under one condition and he goes oh yeah of course under that Bella has to consent and he goes okay two conditions yeah yeah it's so smart I like the fact that they have sort of her interest in mind but being the men that they are and the time and place that they are that they are putting themselves first and I love how she eventually supersedes them mhm when Bella first discovers her sort of aerogenous zones she she's just at the dinner table and all of a sudden she grabs an apple MH and shoves it up her vagina which it kids do and proceeds to masturbate has an orgasm and then now she's just fixated on it and her maid comes and oh I like Mrs PR oh gosh I mean it it's just all so clever but the way the different ways in which Bella describes sex and masturbating and pleasure is just and I you read the book does the book use that language there is a lot of that language oh it's it's so good it's so funny and I love the way Bella spe there's a manner of speech that is so particular but then there are moments when particularly Mark rufo's character who I thought was extremely funny yeah he'll just break and be like what the f is going on like what what the f are you talking about which like like I just think is like the perfect moment like those moments are so perfect for him to just break when he's like how do you know what empirically means but you've never seen a banana yeah it it's also like amazingly absurd uh but is a a really unique way to approach something that's taboo which is woman sexuality sure a developmental sexuality so when Mark absconds with well he doesn't really abscond with her everyone knows she's is leaving but he takes her to Lisbon they stay in this fancy hotel and he's trying to like do fancy dinners and meet fancy people and the first time they have dinner with another couple Bella interacting with them is funny I think that scenes in the trailer where Bella then is like bored with the conversation and then a baby's crying and she's like I need to get up and punch this baby I just I don't really know Emma Stone is she in la la land she won an Oscar for that yeah I didn't care for La La Land I not her fault I know you like EAS a yeah she's really cute I don't have like an impression of her except I didn't care for La La Land so I didn't well you seen Cruella which I also surprisingly liked yeah I think I liked Cruella but so I was just so blown away by this lady mhm I just thought she was so perfect oh it's also important though her hair grows at a very rapid pace so she has this like H's man of dark hair this long Crystal Gale man that I think just accentuates her char so perfectly cuzz the way she moves and yeah well in the costume design everything is very cuz this is a kind of like a parallel universe where of of London and Lisbon and Paris and Alexandria that's not meant to look realistic at all in fact it's like futuristic period Well since you brought that up the movie's broken up into five segments mhm which is uh lisman they do end up on a ship because Mark rufalo tries to basically like he's trying to attra he's trying to entra her because she's while they're in Lisbon she's having sex with other men she's doing all kinds of stuff and Mark is going crazy because he's jealous even though he was trying to act like he was only going to use her for sex now he's fully in love with and obsessed with her so he puts her on a ship which we need to talk about but um the film is bro broken into those segments then they end up homeless in Paris uh before that they go to Alexandria and then they end up back in London but all those segments are broken up with like a title card that's almost like a moving piece of art that I thought they were Exquisite and they are yeah like those five title cards could be in a museum or a gallery somewhere just beautiful even the end credits where we get different shots of the interiors and then hearing Willam defo talk about the sets and how um intricate they were intricately designed and executed it's also impressive uh and it's worth noting Robbie Ryan was the cinematographer who who lends the favorite uh for Lanos but also Andrea Arnold's American honey and many many many other films but I'm I'm gonna say this only because I think she would think it's funny but I thought William defoe's look in this movie reminded me of Joan Rivers he looks crazy as hell Jo Rivers before her makeup on so on the ship Bella makes some friends the wonderful Hannah Shala the new German wave star yeah and she has a companion with her B sha uh Gerard carmichel did I say the name wrong Bella sh Hannah Hannah we'll talk about Gerard okay okay but while she's on the boat it's Hannah Shala who sort of empowers Bella to want to be more independent she's giving her books they're having philosophical conversations about Emerson and and Mark rufo's character doesn't like that he wants to keep her the way she was he's like you start the way you that Charming way you speak is going away it's going away so at a point mark is like I'm going to kill that lady that old lady Hannah and he tries to throw her overboard and I thought that was funny cuz that old lady was not bothered by not at all she actually ends up using her cane to like gouge him in the throat but so they end up in Alexandria and Bella has befriended Gerard Carmichael's character and he wants to show her some things as he says out of a he has a cruel streak because he's a cynic and he finds her kind of uh optimism foolish so he takes her to the slums of Alexandria and she sees like degradation yeah dead babies and she becomes like hysterical she wants to do something so she goes back onto the boat and she takes all of Mark rufo's money who has just one a a shitload gambling he was gambling he takes every she takes every last doll of his and tries to go give it to the poor people but the ship is leaving so the people who work on the ship like the where where you exit they're like oh well what are you trying to do well I want to give this box of money to the poor people and these two guys are like oh well we're going to get off the boat they're like we got you g we can do it and of course they steal the money we would assume but when she gets back Mark freaks out and the captain is there and he's like wait so if you don't have any money you can't pay your bill so you're going on ship rations until we get to Paris and then we're kicking your ass off the boat and that's how they end up homeless well I think they kicked off in Marseilles not that okay but they end up in Paris yeah so I think Emma Stone does an amazing job William defo does an amazing job and then we get to Paris and we meet The Madam of the wh house Madam swany played by Katherine Hunter giving me Dominique fro here oh I loved her yes she is this grizzled old lady covered in tattoos but the way she the way this character is written and how she appeals to Bella's character is so I thought so good because she's clearly wanting to use this girl but then she also has some compassion for her she even says to them like I'm your mother and Bella's like you ain't nobody's Mama you're just used or she's like you're my favorite of all the girls she's like I've heard you say that all to all the girls you know cathern Hunter was my favorite part of the tragedy of MC Beth the Joel con version with Denzel and Francis mcdorman she the witch yes that's right yes but Bella takes to prostituting very well and she's very popular but uh there's a scene in particular where of course if no one's ever been to a a a wh house a den of iniquity U you know the girls usually line up mhm and in this movie they do and Bella kind of wants to be like she wants to create a union or something cuz she's like hold on I think that we should flip this I think the girls should choose the John that way we know that they are interested cuz a lot of these men are really unappealing so then I have to have sex with someone I don't find attractive and The Madam is like let me talk to you for a second and she gets belled together and she starts this thing where she bites her her earlobe which is so funny because then every every time after that when The Madam goes to speak to Bella Bella gets scared like she's going to bite her but that's when Bella decides that she's going to take matters into her own own hands so every time she gets a John she has developed this new thing where she goes um you have to tell me a childhood memory then I'll tell you a joke and then we're going to do a smell test cuz these men smell gross right and can if and if they don't smell nice she'll lather them in lavender oil but when we see her do it it actually works really well and I thought that was so well done it breaks the ice very well and one of those Johns is played by Damen Bernard who brings his two young Sons to I was like yeah there's this guy who you just mentioned who is a dad and he brings his two young Sons they look like they're maybe like 10 and 13 yes and he wants to show them what sex is like which is obviously very taboo but also kind of like well that is I don't know I mean that could be an effective way to teach kids about sex show them I don't the younger one is taking copious notes uh if my dad would have done that to me I'd be uh scarred for life but but when he's touching her breasts and cuz much much after that happens in French he says something like oh you do this and she goes well sometimes and then he not he's taking a while to finish so she's telling the boys like well sometimes if you stick a finger up their butt or choke them it works so she starts choking the dad and then he finishes I'm like I can't believe I'm watching this but it was so good um so Mark rufo's character he come I think this is also in the trailer where he shows up at the wh house trying to get Bella back which is very much Rando in street car screaming Stella he and he looks crazy cuz he's been on the streets but he ends up in a looney bin and that's when candles he writes to Godwin Baxter and so Dr Baxter sends candles to go get him CU they want Bella and then that's how Bella ends up going back but that's also how the husband finds Bella at the end because Mark rufo's character puts two and two together MH yeah it's all um I remember after seeing it at Venice the few complaints that I was hearing about is like once the third once Christopher Abbott shows up people were already felt like it was too long but I actually don't mind that it it's a very rich how long is the movie it's 2 hours and 20 minutes you know I'm sensitive to movies over like 88 minutes and I was captivated the enti I could see how people think that it kind of felt like oh like another chapter I was into it but but don't you want to know more about it fascinating oh my gosh at the wedding so at by the time Bella gets married to candles uh William def's character is on his deathbed like he's like immobile but he does show up to the wedding so as the audience we're like oh my gosh like he's here and he's like well I took a bunch of heroin and some cocaine you know I'm partial well you know partial to cocaine so really it was the heroin that got his ass up so funny every doctor I've ever met and you get to know them personally wow okay we're running out of time but uh this is nearly a perfect film The reason I'm not giving it a perfect score is because there was one character who I thought felt really out of place I agree and that was Gerard Carmichael's character the the I I get that it was probably a choice and he may be even was directed that way but his line delivery is jarringly out of sync this filmmaker is clearly like a master filmmaker so I'm sure was very specific in casting and all the details so I'm sure this person had a vision for this actor in this role I just didn't see it and every time he was on screen I kind of wanted him to not be on screen I didn't I couldn't believe a word of what he was saying well that he believed it I envisioned the companion because we find out that Hannah shala's character hasn't had sex in many years which like confuses Bella but so I kind of wish that her companion would have been an older gay man and explored that kind of relationship and explored that and maybe Bella could have understood what it means to be gay because she ends up having a lesbian relationship I felt like the Gerard carmichel character needed to be an older like obviously queer man because in this movie his character we don't understand his sexuality so yeah that's the part that didn't work for me I agree but my final thought is I love this idea of she's you know kind of not a woman born but she's she's her mother and she's also her daughter and therefore existing outside of the the restrictions of the patriarchy I I there's a lot of there's a lot more than our conversation can even barely en Encompass but what would you give this film 4 and A2 I would give this film 4 and A2 out of five hit the thanks button listen to our podcast bye

Channel: Fish Jelly Film Reviews

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Id: YJ-cl4JN7Vc

Length: 29min 46sec (1786 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2023