I have seen a good bulk of the movies the world has had to offer, and nothing I have seen before compares to Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel. To me, this movie seems to disguise the over sexualization of young girls in modern day cinema, but it does so with a flair. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the basic plot summary is as this: a mad scientist discovers a woman’s dead body at the bottom of a bridge, finds out she is pregnant, takes her back to his lab where he swaps out the mother’s brain for her child's, ergo creating a woman with a child's brain, giving this creature the name of Bella Baxter. Not your typical movie. 

Now, if the author/director were to leave this as is, and Bella went on to attend school and achieve worldly accomplishments, I would say, “alright, that’s a bit strange and unorthodox, but okay. I can get on board.” But that is not what happened at all. In fact, the exact opposite occurred. Instead of pursuing an interest in sports, or art, or science, she discovers her body, and with that, masturbation and sex. I would guess at this point she would be a five or six year old, and to me it seemed completely inappropriate for a child to be doing this on camera. An adult woman, fine. She’s an adult, but this person that has been created on screen is a child. When I watched this film, the men in it do not see her as a woman, or even a human, but an experiment. 

From there, Bella continues to uncover things about her body, things a seven year old girl wouldn’t normally want to know or even see or think about, and is eventually, in my personal opinion, touched by the family lawyer who is there to look over the contract for Bella’s marriage to her “father’s” assistant. So, before the lawyer, played by Mark Ruffalo, is able to finalize the contract pertaining to Bella and the assistant’s marriage, he wanders around the house, curious as to what woman would require such a significant contract. Once she is found, naked from the waist down, the lawyer proceeds to touch her, just for a moment, before he proclaims he wants to sleep with her and take her to Portugal. Every seven year old girl’s dream, right? 

Consequently, Bella ends up in Portugal with Mark Ruffalo the lawyer, and has sex with him consistenly. In her free time, she attempts to understand more about the world, wandering around a fictitious Lisbon, with curiosity on her mind. (This bit of intellect I greatly appreciated). I see that the author and Lanthimos try to show that she is encouraged by other things, with books being her main source of information, and for that I am grateful. However, it was not enough in my opinion. Yet, before she can go home, she gets stranded in Paris where she becomes a prostitute. For a while, we see her consistently have sex with strange men, and according to the director and Bella, she is broadening her mind. The last I heard, sex was sex, and school and the world were the places in which one broadened ones’s mind, not a whorehouse. 

Now, if this were a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions, I would have no issue with this film. Having sex is a natural part of life, and it should not be shunned. However, this book was written by a man. The screenplay was written by a man. This movie was directed by a man. With this, I see this as men telling women what they really need more in their lives: sex. Now, even though Emma Stone was a producer, and for that I applaud her, I think that she thought this was alright, and that is her opinion. Her adult opinion, however, I disagree with. And, as one more footnote, the protagonist in this film is a child. A woman’s body yes, but a child’s brain, creating a person with a childs mind with a fully developed female body, complete with breasts and a vagina, for the men to do with as they please. When societies normalize this on screen, how long is it before it is normalized in the home? 

I, as a woman, and as someone who has seen sex trafficking first hand, cannot condone a film like this. I saw this film in the theaters, and I have such deep regret for supporting this production with my dollar that I earned myself. However amazing the sets and cinematography were (which they were), it does not completely hide the true meaning behind this film: the over sexualization of young girls. And to boot, this film is nominated ten times over for Academy Awards, awards in which they deserve only a few of. A truly great film, one in which that is good and valuable in its story and meaning, would be one that would not warrant a nineteen year old woman’s lecture on the over sexualization of young girls in cinema. It would be one that encourages proper treatment of all people, and not the improper treatment of our children and women.