Well it seems their was a film that cleverly critiqued the patriarchy…. but it was not Barbie. It was mostly Poor Things. There was a great comedian who found a new generation of fans on David Letterman named Brother Theodore who had a bit where he shared (as a man in his 70’s) that his ideal girlfriend was a rich widow, 13 years old with firm…. Well, take that routine and toss in a little Frankenstein and you got Poor Things. The film is visually stunning — not quite as fanciful as a Jeunet film like Delicatessen or City of Lost Children, but lush and fantastically inventive. And oh does it have performances. Emma Stone won me over. As Ralph Tabakin says about color TV in Diner, she was not for me. But she crushes this. Her physicality staggers. And then, my favorite part of the film, Mark Ruffalo channeling Peter Sellars as Clare Quilty in Lolita. This film at its heart is a mashup of Lolita and Frankenstein, and Ruffalo’s genius performance hammers (furiously jumps) that home. But it also feels like a film about the patriarchy in kind of an icky way. Bella is created by mad scientist DeFoe, who doesn’t furious jump her (her term for it) because he’s pregnant. But he does allow her to call him God. And maybe we have the secret for all these Red State douche bags that want to deny a woman reproductive choice. Spelled out, “If I can’t ‘furious jump’ them, then damn it, they must respect my position as their god.” So Bella, his creation, is a fully grown woman (Emma) with the mind of an infant. Here Stone’s performance shines. Her movements capture an adult moving like an infant. While dad’s assistant is groomed to marry her and help keep an eye on the experiment (her), she is spirited away by Ruffalo channeling Sellar’s Quilty. It’s great fun. And here if films had footnotes, there would be one to not just Lolita but also Terry Southern’s hilarious reworking of Candide, Candy. The film is a classic sixties romp with everyone from Brando to Walter Matthau. Candy err Bella drops Ruffalo’s wanna be Quilty and searches for enlightenment. she ends up in a brothel. In this brothel there is no non-consensual sexual violence and no venereal disease. Just a Camillie Paglia paradise of a woman owning her sexuality and changing for it. It’s fun, but icky. She makes her way back only to be captured by the man she was married to before she became a Frankenstien-ella. He is violent and possessive. And so she has run the gamut of men, and endured the different forms of power and abuse that give a well rounded reflection of the patriarchy. And yet having seen the world and read the great books, as a liberated powerful woman, she marries the creepy guy that proposed to her when she was an infant. Yuck. He’s played as a good guy, but there is something supremely creepy. At least Ruffalo’s character didn’t make any bones about it so to speak, he was all about the furious jumping (until he got all sentimental and possessive), but this guy is somehow the happy ending? A guy who proposed to an infant and then was willing to wait it out til HE deemed it proper to start jumping. And this was where the film tripped me up. On the one had, it is a thoughtful critique and great fun, and yet on the other it ends with a sort of wink and a nod that pedophilia is alright if you are gentlemanly about it. And there seems something oddly sanitized about life as a prostitute. It’s just well icky. But its also great fun, certainly a startling take on the journey of (self) enlightenment. But where does that trip end.
Sloves' Rants
