Review by John P. Harvey.
In a steampunk late-nineteenth-century London, Bella (Emma Stone) is having to relearn everything following a head injury. Bella’s adoptive father, surgeon Dr Godwin “God” Baxter (a remarkably transformed Willem Dafoe), employs promising student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to document Bella’s progress and help protect her while God continues with his own surgical research.
But Bella wants to immerse herself in the outside world, and determines to do so with the help of lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), despite all opposition by both God and Max.
What follows is an unpredictable tale of Bella’s remarkable journey, the effects of her strong naïvety on others, and the chance events that influence her choices. Many of its steampunk aspects have little bearing on the story; but they certainly colour this cross between Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, and Amélie with interest and humour.
The story — albeit in some ways an adventurous returning-of-competency romance and in other ways a surreal science-fiction fantasy — is grounded in beautiful dialogue and mostly beautiful manners and good intentions, leading it almost into the territory of drawing-room comedy. Against this almost magical realism, the film conveys the peculiarity of Bella’s journey through remarkable cinematography, using a range of colour gamuts — and often from unusual angles and using artistic visual distortion to convey the strangeness of Bella’s perceptions of her world.
An original, fascinating, rewarding tale indeed, Poor Things is sure to become a cult favourite.