Poor Things Review: Bella Baxter Isn't A Feminist Poster Girl; And That's Okay.
Poor Things gave us an unhinged female anti-hero and I'm living for it. Here's why.
I boarded my flight back to New York about an hour ago, and we still haven’t pulled off. The captain said something about missing paperwork, which I was entirely unaware was one of the things you needed to make a plane move. My seat belt is starting to feel faintly like a straitjacket, and it has been exactly 24 hours since I watched Poor Things. So, I decided to write down my probably long-winded musings about the film while I wait.
Since the release of Barbie and the resulting discourse that ensued, I've contemplated proposed—or simply perceived—feminist perspectives in film and the ever-changing benchmarks with which we analyze these stories, specifically those with multi-million-dollar studio budgets.
While initially captivated by the discourse surrounding Barbie’s feminist message, I have since concluded that, apart from America Ferrera’s 'Feminism for Dummies' monologue, the film offers little in terms of critical commentary, particularly when viewed through the lens of a black queer femme.
Let me be clear, though: I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and still consider it a compelling vehicle for sharing women’s stories. It's crucial to recognize that although women’s stories and feminist narratives often coexist, they are not synonymous. I would die on the hill that they don’t have to be.
This isn’t about Barbie, but I needed to illustrate something, and I promise this will make sense by the end of this. Now, Poor Things. Firstly, let me clarify—I loved it like most people. So, if you were expecting a contrarian critique tearing the film apart, I don’t have that for you.
I do think there’s some validity to the critique of the film playing into the “Born Sexy Yesterday” trope popularized by the Sci-Fi genre; it does follow a woman who was Frankensteined with the brain of an unborn child by an amoral scientist who then proceeds to appear in a dozen sex scenes. However, I would deem it unfair to reduce the very earnest story that ensues to that.
Ultimately, the film constructs a highly fantastical world to illustrate a relatively simple concept—that agency stripped away from women can go largely unnoticed by those deprived. Society functions as a mirrored maze of patriarchy, with men reflecting themselves in a way that’s almost dizzying.
Cruelty, kindness, safety, and ownership superimpose upon each other until a crack appears. This theme manifests at every corner of Bella’s journey and with all the men in her life.
Dr. Godwin Baxter quite literally assumes the role of Bella’s 'Sky Daddy'—she literally refers to him as God. He is an extreme example of a father who deems himself all-powerful, placing a blank canvas in Bella’s mind to paint his own image of who she was and would become.
Max McCandles, who came along to sit by the metaphorical aquarium that was Bella Baxter, equipped with a pen and paper to document everything from the speed of her hair growth to every shit she took. His character is particularly interesting to me. He is presented as a boyish, sensitive figure whom the audience can root for because he was the first to perceive Bella’s personhood and demand the truth about how she came to be. Simultaneously, he’s quite literally the biggest vehicle of the “Born Sexy Yesterday” trope, proclaiming to have feelings for Bella when she could still only speak at a 4-year-old level and had only just stopped pissing on the floor.
Before I tear Duncan Wedderburn apart, I would like to say Mark Ruffalo gave the second-best performance right behind Emma Stone, with probably my favorite role of his to date. That said, his character is quite clearly deplorable from the start. We see this as soon as he approaches Bella and takes her naiveté and curiosity as an opportunity to diddle between her legs without an ounce of consent, spoken or otherwise.
Even Harry Astley, initially portraying a well-meaning friend, goes out of his way not to educate or challenge Bella but to scare her into abandoning her quest for meaning, wonder, and trust in people. This manipulation occurs under the guise of being logical, as if men haven’t bastardized that word enough.
And then there's Bella's husband from her previous life. Unlike all the other men who have claimed to care, love, objectify, or be curious about her, he is very open about his belief that he owns her. Her sole purpose is to bear him children—a belief so ingrained that he's almost nonchalant about revealing his intention to mutilate her to get what he believes he's owed.
I would argue, though, that Alfie Blessington is the best kind of misogynist to come across. Unlike all the others, his outward cruelty was so pronounced that Bella instantly recognized exactly what he was.
I go into a description of each of these men, not to center them but to create a pathway for us to view Bella’s alchemist-like adventure. The exciting thing about Bella, though, is that she meets each of these obstacles with immovable curiosity, the kind that frustrates society into unveiling its inconsistencies, contradictions, and, ultimately, the underlying stench beneath the heavy coat of patriarchy.
This is where my earlier rambling comes into play. When examining Bella’s story, if we focus solely on a magnifying glass equipped with a lens that identifies only profound Marxist feminist rhetoric, we run the risk of overlooking the honest allegory of the burden of choice and the bravery required to confront consequences with an almost audacious self-assuredness that your actions were part of an unadulterated quest for self-determination, regardless of the outcome.
One of the most subtle and, therefore, more sinister things that living in a patriarchy does is the penalization of the word “why” uttered out of a woman’s mouth. And Bella Baxter beats the “Sexy Baby” allegations for this very reason. She may have started out with the impressionability of a toddler, but she was never docile and dared to challenge well before she understood how far it could take her.
I reflect on a day during exam season in SS3 when two-thirds of the girls in my year were required to sit outside our principal's office. During the next hour or two, we were instructed to take our braids out after a teacher closely examined our scalps, singling out each of us who had added braiding hair.
One of us had the audacity to ask why, explaining that it was exam season and many of us attended school until 6 pm most days, with additional weekend lessons. Adding hair attachments allowed us to maintain our hairstyles longer while focusing on our studies. The best explanation she received was a simple 'It's not done' from one teacher and a chilling look of contempt from another. The silent threat was so potent that she sank back onto the floor, likely making a mental note never to ask why again.
I imagine Bella Baxter would have kept going at them with a loquacious account of empirical evidence why it made no fucking sense till they were either too tired to keep her or until she decided shaving her head was the next practical course of action.
The essence here is that I don’t emphasize choices in a conventional, choice-feminist manner. Most choice feminists, ultimately, advocate for women choosing what's most comfortable, often leading to a state of obliviousness or conforming to pre-determined norms, usually set by men. But that isn’t Bella.
Even when she acquiesces to the men around her, her quest for exposure is her foremost motivation. If they get to fuck or love or hate her in the process, then so be it. Each ethical or philosophical crossroad she met, standing ten toes, contemplating her own observations, and pointing the exact way she would go, even when it put her face to face with the barrel of a cocked gun and a blade being sharpened to remove her clit.
Bella wasn't a 'good person' in her previous life; she remains inherently indifferent to notions of good or evil in her current one. Morality was never her mission. Even before her frontal lobe developed enough to understand, she wasn't seeking the fickle validation that her choices were virtuous or admirable, as we've been indoctrinated to do. Her goodness is detached from morality, religion, or obligation, and her hedonism isn’t fueled by blind rebellion; she is whoever she chooses to be when the moment arises. The audacity of taking space in that way is something many women either lose and spend their lives relearning or simply don’t realize they never had.
Within this aspiration, there are obvious considerations for what kind of woman gets to be audacious, the politics of race and economy of beauty, picking and choosing who they deem worthy, and what guardrails exist around daring to take up space and asking why.
While the character of Bella Baxter may not fulfill the feminist icon expectations people sought in this film, she emerges as precisely the female antihero I needed—a woman who dares to challenge, fail, indulge, and pivot at every turn. Beyond the profound and conceptual discussions, 'Poor Things' offers a visual feast and comedic genius and possesses the rewatch value of a classic.