Poor Creatures proves that films are better when they tell the story of female genius

Simple as SylvainAnatomy of a fall and time Poor creatures. From the love triangle, to the mystery of an unsolved death, to the discovery of the world by a Frankenstein woman, these films released in recent months have, a priori, absolutely nothing in common.

It’s still. They all testify to an ongoing movement in contemporary cinema, which, finally, gives space to female films. There is in fact a tacit but important common point for thinking about the way in which feminism renews and improves cinema.

In Poor creatures (as in the two previous titles), the cinema of Yórgos Lánthimos draws its material from the curiosity, empathy, kindness, humor, intelligence and infinite sensitivity of its main character female. This film opening cinematic territories full of new stories, new images, in an art historically limited to telling a world of men from man’s point of view male gauze.

Poor creatures, what is it?

Bella is a young woman brought back to life by Dr. Godwin Baxter. Under her protection, she is eager to learn. Raised within four walls, her hand is promised to the young and kind doctor’s assistant, Max McCandless.

But, eager to discover the world she knows nothing about, she runs away with Duncan Wedderburn, a skilled and dissolute lawyer, and embarks on a dizzying odyssey across continents.

Insensitive to gender norms and preconceived ideas of her time, Bella will not be influenced by anything except her sense of listening, observation, her empathy and her intelligence.

Beyond the cliché of “born sexy yesterday”.

When Doctor Godwin Baxter shows Bella to the young apprentice Max McCandless, the latter’s first words upon seeing her are: “She is sublime. What a beautiful house ». At the beginning of the film, Bella seems like a big, brainless child. Her weak knees prevent her from walking straight, she laughs while breaking dishes and she discovers an incredible and unexpected pleasure when she accidentally touches her vulva. In other words, at the beginning of the film, Bella is pure sensitivity, without brain.

From that moment on, when we started working on the film, we had a fear: that it would revive one of the worst sexist and fetishistic clichés of cinema, born sexy yesterday. This stereotype refers a character with a female body that is extremely desirable and within beauty standardsbut whose brain makes it comparable to that of a child. In other words, the born sexy yesterday it is a variation of the sexist cliché of the femme fatale, in which stupidity, candor and enthusiastic sexual appetite have replaced the manipulative and diabolical dimension.

That she is an alien (Under the skin), a woman who traveled through space and time (Wonder Woman) or a Frankenstein (this is the case of Bella), a simple sleight of hand in the screenplay is enough as a pretext to reproduce the endless dialogues or schoolboy scenes, where this sublime woman he speaks and acts completely uninhibited because he is discovering sexuality and has no idea about social norms and realities, such as modesty OR sexual violence suffered by men.

Only the vastness of the world is the measure of Bella’s curiosity

While you might think you would dive in headfirst, the film doesn’t just subvert the cliché of born sexy yesterday : uses it reflective way For take your Bella where she needs to go. “God,” her creator, may keep her away from humans, but her beauty attracts vultures. Duncan Wedderburn, an absolutely happy man to do it take a woman-child hostage to make her his sexual object, takes it with him on a trip to Lisbon. He was then far, very far (and he will never be able to) from imagining how much Bella’s inner wealth would have thwarted all his plans.

In reality, the issue of Bella’s discovery of sexuality is much bigger than the ambush of a stupid and manipulative mascu AND bordering on child molestation. This is only part of the findings sensitive, intellectual or emotional than Bella. From the pleasures of taste to the musicFrom visual beauty has the instructions contained in the books Passing through friendship, political beliefs, joy or the depressionhis trip is just a pretext for this who is in her can hatch.

So far, this idea of ​​initiatory travel is not very revolutionary. But where Poor creatures it doesn’t look like anything else, it’s because it tells intelligence, nobility, empathy and kindness Truly innate of a woman in a world corrupted by greed, possessiveness, jealousy or cynicism of men.

In reality, the character can constantly learn observe and listen others, is influenced only by itself. Paradoxical and fascinating character, Bella he absorbs everything, but never lets himself be influenced. None of his actions, choices or words he does not escape the work done by his people instinct, common sense and heart.

There is nothing essentializing in the film. He never says that his qualities are biological from Bella. On the contrary: they always fall under prejudice of the character. while men are completely made insensitive, cynical or stupid by their violence, by their selfishness, by their obsession with precisely and dominate.

Childish common sense, to better reveal the absurdity of masculinity

Most men (beginning with Duncan Wedderburn) understand all these qualities and are incapable of seeing them. Worse yet: they react by going completely misunderstandings. When she enjoys sleeping with him, he asks her about it “so as not to get attached”but when he realizes that she is not only emancipated with him but with any human being who crosses his paththey he takes her hostage on a boat. When she has friends, a satisfied sexuality, money, values, love and beliefs, he screams and rolls on the floor calling her a whore.

Self Poor creature it is a pure materialization of female gauzeand this Bella’s insatiable curiosity taints the entire film until its staging, its form and its editing. The movie doesn’t look at Bella that way an object : She he is the one who looks. The film is content to model itself on this aspect.

Contrary to what you might think, the “poor creatures” from the title, it is not Bella, but the men around. At their house, intelligence and goodness never have the opportunity to blossom as the inside is corrupted by masculinity.

Bella returns them all goats because it doesn’t belong to anyone.

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