POOR THINGS is exactly the kind of movie that attracts Oscars. Big and showy performances and production design. Pays lip service to deeper themes like feminism and socioeconomic inequalities while not offering up anything genuinely challenging or thought-provoking. Basically cinematic fireworks: all flash, nothing lasting.
Parts of the movie are superficially entertaining. The costumes and production are gorgeous all around. However, the film's "feminist" themes are incredibly shallow, more or less limited to "women also deserve sexual pleasure" and "the patriarchy devalues women." Interestingly, for such an empowering film, the movie largely limits Bella Baxter's journey to the realm of the sexual, with any focus on her ideas about society relegated to the margins. We get told she's entertaining socialistic ideas and bigger philosophical ideas about human nature, but nothing is ever delved into, lest we spend time away from the film's bizarre, unerotic sex scenes.
I don't know. I struggled to finish this thing. It's overlong and completely fails to justify even half its own runtime. Considering how much I adored the director's 2018 film THE FAVOURITE, I expected much more from POOR THINGS.
Parts of the movie are superficially entertaining. The costumes and production are gorgeous all around. However, the film's "feminist" themes are incredibly shallow, more or less limited to "women also deserve sexual pleasure" and "the patriarchy devalues women." Interestingly, for such an empowering film, the movie largely limits Bella Baxter's journey to the realm of the sexual, with any focus on her ideas about society relegated to the margins. We get told she's entertaining socialistic ideas and bigger philosophical ideas about human nature, but nothing is ever delved into, lest we spend time away from the film's bizarre, unerotic sex scenes.
I don't know. I struggled to finish this thing. It's overlong and completely fails to justify even half its own runtime. Considering how much I adored the director's 2018 film THE FAVOURITE, I expected much more from POOR THINGS.