Pobres Criaturas

Poor things is directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and is supported with a strong cast, namely Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe.

The first impression you get from this movie is bizarre to say the least. In fact, it takes some time to get used to the ambiance which is nothing short of macabre. And surely, this impression lasts throughout the whole movie; but this feeling of weirdness and incomprehension serves the plot and in this sense, is most welcome. Eventually, there comes a time where, inevitably, and without even realizing it, you are suctioned right in, never to escape again. And you are glad to be trapped in what is essentially pit of limitless pleasure.

Indeed, one of the things the movie does very well is make you, along with the protagonist, embark on an adventure. Sure, you might have been to the places the protagonist went to, but those are presented in a most wonderful way. The aesthetics are magnificient and otherworldly. I do not know how they did it, but I remember being in awe and it is a feeling that I will cherish for a lifetime. It is truly a sight to behold.

It is the kind of movie which makes you feel grateful to be alive.

Clearly a lot of people enjoyed this grotesque movie, but it wasn't for me. Some of the scenes in it made me feel sick, and maybe they were supposed to, but it seemed unnecessary. Don't even get me started on how pretentious the movie was.

I also found this movie very frustrating because the acting was good, the sets and costuming were good, and some scenes used striking cinematography. These things all made me feel like I should've liked the movie, but I don't. It could have been put to much better use.

The sex and nudity is beyond gratuitous. I'm usually not bothered by sex scenes in movies, but for this particular film it felt perverted. Maybe the director has a weird fetish.

Ultimately, this film made me want to crack my own head open and pour bleach over my brain. It's one of those movies I'd like to block out. I don't think I'll ever watch anything else by Lanthimos.

This is a very unusual movie. I enjoyed watching it, even though it felt awkward at times (as promised by the creators and many reviewers). In my opinion, many users who gave it a 1/10, missed the point. For sure, it is a movie for very mature and sophisticated audiences. It contains a lot of ugly truths about the world, so don't watch it if those bother you. (Don't watch it with teenagers, either, wait until they are 20 or 21.) I appreciated the creative direction, cinematography, and Emma Stone's acting talent. The plot covers multiple aspects of privilege and abuse in thought-provoking ways. On a very high level, you could say that it has some similarities to Barbie, but a very different approach. It is almost the anti-Barbie. The contrast between these two 2023 movies is definitely worth a class discussion in some graduate course of film criticism.

This isn't an easy film to watch and capture everything it tries to convey, on the contrary, it's quite complex.

I'm not a deep connoisseur of Freud, on the contrary, I studied some of his texts when I went to journalism school, but I remember very little, I'm actually unfamiliar with the subject, but clearly "Poor Things" seems to me to work with some points of psychosexual development human developed by Freud.

I may be talking nonsense, but it seems to me that the sexual phases of children described by Freud (oral, anal, genital, etc.) are shown in Bella's development during the projection, as well as her total independence and freedom in relation to the world and in the passage of each of those phases, without being repressed, allowing her to reach the superego.

While working with complex concepts of the development of the human psyche, the film also flirts wonderfully with the frustrations of love, and social, political and human issues, and I honestly couldn't capture everything the work was offering me, a lot of details must have escaped my attention.

So much content, so much complexity, inserted in a spectacular, wonderful cinematography, with exuberant sets, elaborated down to the smallest details, with perfect use of vivid colors and black and white, actors shining on the screen, all of them without exception, incredible direction, and a soundtrack very strange that fits like a glove.

I rate it 8 out of 10 because my ignorance really didn't allow me to capture everything that was being offered to me, and at some moments I felt a little tired from demanding so much of my brain, but it's a great film in all aspects. It's just not for everyone, as it's not what you would call popcorn entertainment cinema, on the contrary, it's the opposite, and perhaps the trailer could mislead certain types of audiences.

During the first half hour of the movie, I was ready to give up on it and find something else to watch. But gradually I got into it -- or it got into me.

Poor Things is an alternate universe, and the ordinary rules of the world we live in don't apply. For instance, you can't just take a brain out of a baby's skull and insert it into an adult's, but you can in this movie.

The characters in this movie couldn't exist in the real world, but that's not the point. The world of the characters is like that in Alice in Wonderland, and like Lewis Caroll's tale, the movie ridicules human pretensions.

In the end, I enjoyed the movie very much, and I think watching it is worthwhile use of time.