Bella Baxter, a literal mind transplanted into a mother’s body—a bold cinematic feat that feels like the product of a wild scientist’s imagination. The film invites viewers into a world that seems historical yet feels unnervingly immediate, a place where Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is reframed as a living texture of modern desire and social critique. Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Creatures unfolds as a cinema instance that reimagines feminist subtexts as palpable, spoken truth, inviting the audience to watch ideas become flesh on the screen.
Within this narrative, Bella emerges as a provocative symbol of what society often does to women: it possesses them, infantilizes them, sexualizes them, and polices their every choice. Yet the central character resists being reduced to mere allegory. She is—on screen—complex, funny, and deeply human, a figure whose richness defies simple empowerment or critique alone.
As Bella’s journey progresses, she grows from stumbling steps into assured movements. Her language blooms; her curiosity, stoked by a mother’s insistence and her own unquenchable appetite, drives her to step beyond the boundaries of the era’s strict social codes. What follows threads a mix of sex comedy and naturalistic bravado, as she flouts Victorian conventions without apology.
Across the road map of her travels lies a sharpened social conscience and a hunger for knowledge, transforming into a rational, self-possessed being. In settings ranging from Lisbon’s hotels to the opulence of luxury cruises and the seedier corners of Parisian brothels, the film pirouettes through dance, cuisine, literature, songs, and ideas—pastéis de Belém, oysters, philosophy, socialism, and the oldest profession all coalescing into a strange, grotesque, yet resonant beauty.
Bella’s escape from confinement becomes a consuming pursuit: the world is tasted with vigor, and she makes it her own with a bold energy that mirrors the care the supporting characters invest in her. With every new insight, the world grows brighter, more vivid, and more abundant, and the film makes room for that transformation to unfold in a way that feels earned. Lanthimos channels a boundless imagination to stage this evolution in luminous, often surreal visuals.
The movie dazzles with electric skies, hyperreal oceans, and baroque retrofuturist cities, captured by a camera that twists, distorts, and rotates with relentless energy. It delivers sensory overload—sound and image playing off one another in ways that can leave a viewer feeling off-kilter, in a good way. Yet Emma Stone’s performance anchors the entire experience, lending believability to a journey that spans more than two hours and moves from wild, unruly youth to found wisdom. The film threads this arc through precise verbal and physical cues, mapping Bella’s development with careful attention to detail.
Bella proves to be an ideal heroine for a filmmaker like Lanthimos, whose body of work includes Canine (2009), The Lobster (2015), and The Favourite (2018). The director has long questioned the systems that shape and restrict people. Poor Creatures appears to mark a new direction in his career, one that blends critique with genuine affection for its central figure. Where previous works often treated characters with a cool, even disdainful gaze, this film embraces Bella with warmth and curiosity, inviting audiences to witness a fierce assertion of autonomy while celebrating the humbling, shared human experience of self-discovery.
In this portrayal, Lanthimos does not merely analyze a character’s independence; he invites audiences to celebrate the possibility of inhabiting one body and one mind within a vast, astonishing world. The result is a film that feels intimate and expansive at the same time, a rare balance that lets Bella’s quest for autonomy illuminate broader questions about identity, desire, and responsibility.
Punctuation: * * * * *
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef
Year: 2023
Premiere: January 26, 2024