Poor Things (2023) Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
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Few films have caused such widespread and contradicting opinion than this Yorgos Lanthimos directed sci-fi comedy. Some have called it incredible and creative, others horrendous and problematic. I had my reservations, but despite these, I decided to watch it, once it came onto streaming, so as to form my own opinion.
And where indeed to begin? I have so many issues with some of the elements of this film. There was in me, a level of discomfort and downright disgust that only grew as the film progressed. It felt, at times, that the story tried to disguise some frankly horrid perversions, under the geise of quirkiness, seemingly for the sake of quirkiness.
I will say, on a more positive note, that I believe that the story had a lot of potential, and plenty of ideas that I think were interesting, regarding discovery, independence, etc. But the needless sexualisation of someone with quite literally a child's brain disturbed me beyond belief.
The film framed the exploitation of its innocent and impressionable protagonist as a way of showing the discovery of the world's issues, but I found much of it extremely unnecessary - especially the aforementioned sexualisation. If you removed it from the film, I think I would have enjoyed the a lot more.
The visuals were poor. I enjoyed the colour palette used, and some of the camerawork, but I did not like the film's general cinematography. I found it ugly. It brought me back to the notion of quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness. For such a peculiar looking film, I found it awfully dull.
A lot has been made, in regards to the acting of Emma Stone, in this leading role, to the point in which she was nominated for best actress at the oscars. However, if I'm honest, I wasn't particularly entertained or impressed. For context, I do enjoy her acting in other films, but I found her character troubling, and her acting, which wasn't, in fairness, poor, to be a little uninspiring.
Mark Ruffalo showed plenty of his comedic talents, but I found his character, and indeed his acting, pretty irritating, for the vast majority of the film. I felt that the chatacter got pretty old, pretty quickly, and my only real emotions towards him, aside from the irritation, was disdain - although, I will say that this was all about the writing and not the actor himself.
Willem Dafoe had some well-formed scenes - I was quite fond of his scenes with Youssef. However, I cannot say that I was overly charmed by a fair amount of his performance. He was not terrible, by any means, but I felt rather underwhelmed, either way.
Ramy Youssef provided a rather sincere performance, although perhaps a little subdued in comparison to the far louder characters of the film. His character had some disturbing undertones initially, if one puts the actions in the film into context, but his actual performance saw few issues, if any.
The film saw some, at best, interesting, supporting performances from the likes of Jerrod Carmichael, Margaret Qualley, Hanna Schygulla, Christopher Abbott and Kathryn Hunter. Of these, I found the performance of Carmichael to be the most enjoyable.
Overall, I find myself lamenting the odd and needless decision to sexualise what could have been a most wholesome and delicate story. In fact, I would say my overarching emotion towards the film is disappointment. The first half of the film disgusted me. The second half was better, but still not enjoyable. The disturbing undercurrent of the film completely ruined what could have been.
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