No Thoughts, Just Naked Ladies
Film Review by Tabi. Mar 11, 2024
WARNING: SPOILERS
Recently I was listening to a podcast talking about the film “Poor things” (2023). It was an art podcast reviewing the story. The host had read both the book and seen the film and she was talking very excitedly about both versions. The story included an experimenting scientist switching a pregnant woman's brain with that of her baby, causing her to live the life happening to a (rich) woman’s body, from the perspective of a baby. Trying to understand the world's rules and norms, she experiences and learns about its cruelty from a neutral and just position. This points out how fucked up our world and us humans really are, on so many different levels. Poor things is intelligent and funny and within the potential of the storys’ complexity I could understand the hosts' admiration of the film. But after having gone to the cinema and watched it for myself, despite my excitement, I couldn't help but leave with an icky aftertaste.
So I talked to my flatmate about it, left it for a few days, thought about other stuff, almost forgot, and then I watched “The Lure” (2015) by Agnieszka Smoczyńska. The Lure is a polish musical horror comedy about two siren sisters who emerge from the sea and want to experience life on land. They become the top attraction of a stripclub, discover themselves in interaction with humans and one sister falls in love with a human. As they navigate love, jealousy, understanding social norms, friendship, sexual exploitation and whether or not to eat men, the film absolutely brilliantly portrays love, lust, desire, pleasure, the cruel realities of the patriarchy and the seemingly unavoidable dark nature of human beings. I absolutely loved the film. It was funny, it was cinematic, it was girlboss-graphic (not too horrifying), the soundtrack and singing actually added to the mystique of the lure portrayed and it was weird in the coolest way possible. I loved it so much I had to watch it again two days later just to check I wasn’t crazy in my first judgement. I felt as if I was getting bewitched by these sexy and terrifying creatures. The Lure felt like, in parts, what Poor Things aspires to be - a bold, fearless, funny, absurd and unapologetic exploration of womanhood, life and human nature wrapped in trappings of fantasy, folklore, sci-fi or musical.
Each story is incredibly rich and full of potential, but while they both revolve around abnormal beings navigating the complexities of being human and placed into a female body, they differ sharply in their visualisation of feminist themes. Where the Lure unflinchingly plunges its finger into the depth of these topics, Poor Things takes a more physical approach and, maybe, tries to include too much, leaving behind that icky and confusing aftertaste. The story behind Poor Things wants to go beyond mere explorations of womanhood, but honestly systems and structures such as race and even class were not addressed enough in order for me not to remember Poor Things as another big “feminist” production.
And, no, that’s not just because of the sex. The Lure also includes a lot of nudity, sensuality and sex, but it does so to further its feminist narrative. The women have a character individual from their discoveries connected to sex. They are allowed to react and be angry or violent rather than simply accept and swallow the cruelty of the world they are presented with, adapt, or even try to solve anything. Within that the sisters both choose to go different ways; one prefers to kill men, unleashing her despair over life’s cruelties, while the other one sacrifices herself for love and humanity. The siren sisters also discover themselves through sex, but the focus within that lies on their emotions and the individual character traits motivating them to make those specific choices. They don’t have to please anyone, don’t have to be good or constructive, don’t have to save anything, they just do whatever they want and are actually allowed to be upset and act up when suddenly faced with very intense previously unknown emotions or realities of our world and life as a human. They are allowed to be individuals, more than mere female bodies, and the juxtaposition of their different experiences on land highlights their individual character traits.
In Poor Things, Bella Baxter seems to mainly discover herself through benefits gained from sex, whether they be physical sensations or material wealth. Her then newly obtained intellectual freedom leads her to conclude it to be her responsibility to save at least a part of the world, and everyone loves her for it. I think what bothered me within that is the role that sex seemed to play within the development of Bellas maturity. It almost seemed to be equated with growth or enlightenment. You’re a girl (or a baby), then you have sex and then you’re a woman or an adult or a person or, in Bellas case, a human. And this is confirmed when the more self aware bella becomes, the less she seems to seek out sex. She doesn’t need sex as much anymore, because she has already maxed out its utility and transitioned from girl to woman. Does this character development actually portray sex and women who have sex as animalistic or psychologically underdeveloped? I’m not sure, just asking..
The film emphasizes Bellas position as a body rather than a mind through its continuous emphasis on sexual awakening. But there are so many more ways to expand and grow and flourish as a human, with and without sex.
Another aspect that bothered me about poor things is the question of how would it have gone if Bella was a man. Thinking about films such as Beauty and the Beast, when the abnormal/monster protagonist is male, the narrative of the film usually revolves around wether they can retain their humanity and return to being an individual or a human. But Bella is seen as a body, specifically a female one, to the extend that the question of her humanity or wether she is a person rarely becomes the films focal point. Sure, in the end she becomes a different kind of woman, but never more than simply a woman. And even so, as Viv Groskop points out, for all the explicitness and importance which sex and the female body seem to play, noone thought to address wether Bella can menstruate or get pregnant?
So I have to ask myself, even if this film was originally intended to be a critical and challenging commentary on how women are reduced to their bodies, sexuality and sexual value, does it not just end up perpetuating these reductions? Film can be a great and safe place to experiment with challenging or new ideas. Experimental films with complex stories are very much needed and I’m very glad Poor Things was made, because we’re starting to ask some of the right questions. But in the end it is not as feminist as it claims to be. The story is actually pretty regressive and degrading, given that it plays into quite a few tropes and clichés in a fairly uncritical manner. What about consent? What about the grooming? Bella is a prisoner, eternally trapped in a body that was never supposed to be hers because of decisions made by men. No thank you, I’ll stick with the sexy killer sirens on this one.
