Review
DULCIE PEARCE
Poor Things review: This quirky and manic film unashamedly puts sex back on the big screen
For the most part, Emma Stone's flick is endlessly intriguing and contagious
POOR THINGS
(18) 141mins
★★★★☆
THERE has been a lot of chat recently about how there is not enough sex shown on the big screen.
Blockbusters dish up violence by the bucket load, but you barely see a flash of nip or an onscreen orgasm these days.
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Well, ladies and gentlemen, Poor Things has changed that.
There’s barely a scene in this kooky and fascinating film that doesn’t involve a naked Emma Stone performing sex acts to get herself off.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos worked with Stone on 2018’s The Favourite, and they join forces again to make a film that is funny, frisky and wildly mad.
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It starts with a heavily pregnant Stone throwing herself from London Bridge.
She is found dead by deranged-yet-devoted scientist Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who is seriously disfigured due to his own mad-scientist father experimenting on him as a boy.
He decides he’d rather like to have this woman alive.
So he puts the brain of her unborn baby into her head, creating a new adult baby he calls Bella Baxter.
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Bella is unsteady on her feet, fearless and has to learn everything from scratch — including how to deal with her many carnal desires.
She soon runs off with caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo).
And when Bella experiences her first orgasm with him, the film turns from black and white to colour.
Stone and Ruffalo’s scenes are absolutely hilarious and wondrous to watch.
It’s unashamedly sexy and completely manic, and the comedy timing and delivery of dialogue makes you want that section of the film to go on forever.
But soon Bella escapes the exhausted Duncan and builds a life for herself as a prostitute in Paris.
This is partly because she adores sex, but also as she desperately needs money.
This sequence of the film pushes the seesaw between Bella’s powerful feminist opinions, which mostly stem from her ignorance of why women aren’t allowed to do what they want, and the uneasiness these opinions cause in others.
Sadly, the final 20 minutes of the film could have been left on the editing floor, probably because they are utterly sexless.
But this quirky and quality film is endlessly intriguing and contagious.
As is Bella’s lust for the life she nearly lost.
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THE BOYS IN THE BOAT
(12A) 124mins
★★☆☆☆
AMERICANS are not often shy about saying how great they are.
And this true story about the success of the USA rowing team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is a paint-by-numbers pat on the back from director George Clooney to his homeland.
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During the Great Depression, Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) is studying to become an engineer.
But he’s dirt poor and appears to be living in a broken car, so needs to find a job to pay his school fees.
Having seen an advert for the college rowing team, which pays, Joe starts training with some other desperate men to make the team.
With the interference of a worldly old boatbuilder – who is constantly sticking his oar in, even though he’s not actually involved – the team is soon beating allcomers.
The scenes are nicely shot, but often painfully dull; the characters are very one dimensional and the story is completely without jeopardy.
You know exactly where it’s going without knowing a thing about it.
While Turner is always a gem to watch, even he can’t save this mediocre melodrama that is so schmaltzy and sickly sweet, it left me feeling seasick.
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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE
(15) 118mins
★★★★☆
NOT many people can take credit for making the sex lives of women better but Shere Hite can.
But in Nicole Newnham’s documentary — produced and narrated by Dakota Johnson — she lays out how the American sex educator and feminist shook up the institution of sex, love and relationships but paid a professional price.
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With archival images, footage and TV interviews, Newnham paints a provocative portrait of a woman who was looked down upon in academia due to her looks, gender and class.
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Undeterred, Hite went on to publish The Hite Report in 1976, a book based on a nationwide study that found women could orgasm better with stimulation — putting to bed the long-held notion that pleasure could only be achieved by male penetration.
Her discoveries led to a sexist backlash and Hite left the public eye as a result – but this refreshing documentary makes an excellent case for her reintroduction as a sex-positive icon.
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