Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Feminist Reflections: From Metaphor to Satire

Amir Siadat

It appears that Lanthimos used his recent fairy tale as a vehicle to reflect on the arduous journey women have undertaken to secure their rights. However, can this reaction be considered inherently feminist as as many critics have suggested? I have my doubts. While the narrative, similar to Pinocchio, revolves around themes of maturity, it diverges from Pinocchio in that the protagonist does not emerge as a wise and informed individual after completing her journey. Although Bella Baxter has clearly changed by the end, this change is not necessarily one of growth or advancement. It can be said that the woman body prematurely exposes the child`s brain to the complex phenomena of life. This brain, having insufficient time to properly process and understand these issues, ends up with a superficial, naive, and half-hearted grasp of everything. In the end, Bella remains a child, with only her childish moods having shifted. Almost everything Bella attempts in the movie stems either from her ignorance or from misunderstanding and coincidence. When she recklessly displays her physical desires, it does not indicate that she is a rebellious, assertive woman defying norms. Her inconsistent mind lacks any true understanding of norms or rebellion; she knows only basic instincts. For instance, she accidentally stumbles upon a brothel while searching for a hotel and easily gets entangled there because no one has taught her the moral values of a conventional life. How can we speak of her maturity when she leaves her wedding party on a whim to join another man who has just arrived? This undermines the perception that the film is an explicit narrative about individual agency, awareness, and the liberation of women. If we consider the scene where one of the prostitutes discusses "socialism" with Bella, it becomes apparent that Lanthimos sees our world as a complete farce. It seems to me that what we hear from Harry, the cynic passenger on the ship, about the world being unfixable reflects the filmmaker's own sentiments. Even the barren professor can be interpreted as the embodiment of a dying rationality, as his tools and laboratory might eventually fall into the hands of someone like Bella, leading to the creation of a "paradise" akin to what we witness at the end.