A friend of mine described Poor Things as having “at least, the most acting of 2023,” and that feels exactly right to me. There’s no way that a story about an Emma Stone-aged woman mentally developing from toddler to adult over the course of maybe a year could be remotely subtle. I also remember thinking several times, “this is precisely the kind of acting that the Academy loves.” (#JusticeForLily.) As with all Yorgos Lanthimos flicks, it’s all very ostentatious and pointedly weird, so YMMV—I hated The Lobster, I loved The Favourite, and I liked Poor Things quite a bit.
But amidst all the flailing noise, there are two quiet scenes that reflect each other from opposite ends of the movie and unlock the emotions of it for me. I call them the Quiet Cuddle Scenes.
You shall find nothing but sugar and spoilers for Poor Things below.
Quiet Cuddle Scene 1: About 10 minutes into the film, when Bella is still extremely under-developed and the movie is still in black and white, we see her in bed with her father figure, God (short for Godwin, and also for God Complex). God is reading her a bedtime story about a family reuniting, while she snuggles against his chest. After he finishes the story, Bella asks if he is her father.
But none of this is true. Bella isn’t an orphan in any normal sense. God found Bella’s mother’s body, and, in a grotesque act of scientific curiosity that he revises to himself as an act of kindness, transferred the soul of the yet-unborn Bella into that body. (Like I said. It’s a Yorgos Lanthimos flick.) That same same self-centered revisionist impulse is at play when he lies to Bella about her parents. The fact of the lie isn’t really the issue—my 36-year-old brain has enough trouble wrapping itself around the truth here, sot here’s no way that Bella’s toddler-stage brain could understand what happened to her. But the nature of the lie—that Bella’s parents were explorers, and that their deaths were righteous because they “pushed the boundaries of what was known”—entirely service’s Godwin’s own worldview. He’s Inception-ing Bella with the capacity to forgive him, since she’ll also believe that testing boundaries is worth any cost. He’s also, ironically, endowing her with a curiosity that will drive her away from him and into the wider world.
This is how Godwin knows how to love: by controlling.
Quiet Cuddle Scene 2: As we round the corner into the final act of the film, Bella’s world is now almost unsettlingly Technicolor, and she’s become a sex worker in Paris. She befriends a fellow sex worker, Toinette, who also becomes her lover. We see Bella and Toinette in a tender post-coital embrace, this time with Toinette snuggling up to Bella’s chest. Toinette notes that she and Bella have matching cesarean scars, and asks where Bella’s baby is.
And in response to Bella’s defense, Toinette drops the quiet analysis that has burrowed itself into my soul:
Bella: My Godwin told me himself.
Toinette: Un homme?
Bella: Oui.
Toinette: Voilà.
“A man?” “Yes.” “There it is.”
Almost every male character in Poor Things tries to control, exploit, or otherwise manipulate Bella. It’s a bleakly funny send-up of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope that turns up in so many sci-fi/fantasy/adventure stories - the hopelessly and appealingly (?) childlike female character who falls in love with the male protagonist because she has no experience to compare him to. It’s Leeloo in The Fifth Element. It’s Giselle in Enchanted. Diana has shades of this in Wonder Woman, though Steve Trevor claims to be “above average” and I for one am inclined to believe the Best Chris. But Bella proves to be as uncontrollable as she is corruptible, and her steadfast determination to do whatever she pleases proves to be more of a headache than a thrill for these men. On the other hand, Toinette is Bella’s true peer. In a moment of total intimacy, she calls to something she and Bella have in common. And when Bella seems to lie, Toinette very straightforwardly encourages her to say—and ultimately, to find—the truth.
This is how Toinette knows how to love: by connecting.
While God’s act of “love” sends Bella on a quest to know the outside world, Toinette’s sends Bella on a quest to know herself and her past. She’s able to return home to confront and forgive Godwin. She’s able to choose a husband who wants her to choose everything for herself. She’s able to put the mind of a goat into the body of her mother’s violently abusive husband. (Again…Yorgos.)
The people who don’t try to control or manipulate Bella, and who actually do live up to the spirit of exploration that Godwin praises in his Quiet Cuddle Scene, are the ones who open Bella’s world up the most. And Toinette the socialist sex worker is my favourite of those people.