Poor Things (2023)

Last updated:
October 28, 2026

Bella Baxter walks into a drawing room with the brain of an infant and the body of a drowned woman, and within two hours she has out-thought every man who tried to own her. Poor Things is Yorgos Lanthimos at his most playful and most pointed. It is a Frankenstein story told from the creature’s side of the table. What follows spoils every twist, so proceed with eyes wide open.

Table of Contents

Detailed Summary

A Woman Jumps From a Bridge

A woman in a blue gown leaps from a London bridge into the river. Her body washes up and lands on the table of Godwin Baxter, a brilliant surgeon with a face stitched together from old experiments. She is pregnant, and the unborn child still has a living brain.

Godwin makes a choice that defines the film. He removes the infant’s brain and places it inside the mother’s skull. The woman wakes as Bella Baxter, an adult body steered by a newborn mind.

Max McCandles Arrives

Godwin hires a quiet medical student, Max McCandles, to record Bella’s progress. Max watches her smash plates, stab corpses, and learn fifteen new words a day. He falls for her almost immediately, which Godwin finds convenient.

Bella calls Godwin “God,” and the nickname sticks. Their household also contains a duck with a dog’s body and a chicken with a pig’s head. Normal rules do not apply here.

Bella Discovers Pleasure

Bella finds an apple and quickly discovers what her body can do with it. She announces her new hobby to the dinner table, and the household reacts with horror. Housekeeper Mrs. Prim becomes an unwilling audience to Bella’s experiments.

Godwin, meanwhile, pushes Max to propose marriage. He wants Bella to stay inside the house forever. Max agrees, and Godwin brings in a lawyer to draw up the contract.

Duncan Wedderburn Makes His Move

That lawyer is Duncan Wedderburn, a preening rake with a magnificent moustache and no scruples. He reads the contract, spots the strange clauses, and sneaks upstairs to meet Bella. Within minutes he offers to show her the world.

Bella does not want a contract or a cage. She tells Max she will marry him after she has seen Lisbon with Duncan. Then she leaves, and the film bursts from black and white into saturated color.

Lisbon in Full Color

Lisbon is pastries, sunshine, and what Bella calls “furious jumping.” She eats custard tarts until she vomits, then orders more. She also drags Duncan onto a dance floor and performs a jerking, flailing routine that has become the film’s signature image.

Duncan expected a doll. Instead he gets a woman who wanders off alone, questions strangers, and refuses to feel ashamed. His charm curdles into jealousy within days.

Trapped on a Ship

Duncan drugs Bella and carries her onto a cruise ship so she cannot escape him. On board she meets two passengers who change her life: the elegant Martha Von Kurtzroc and the cynical Harry Astley. Martha hands Bella books, and Bella devours philosophy.

Harry takes her on deck in Alexandria and shows her a pit of starving people below. Bella sobs, grabs Duncan’s gambling winnings, and hands the cash to two sailors who promise to deliver it to the poor. They pocket every coin.

Broke in Paris

With no money, the couple is dumped in Marseille. They reach Paris penniless, and Duncan dissolves into drunken self-pity. Bella walks into a brothel run by Madame Swiney and asks for a job.

She finds the work fascinating, revolting, and occasionally funny. She also meets Toinette, a socialist who becomes her lover and her political tutor. Duncan, in contrast, spirals until he lands in an asylum.

A Letter From Home

A letter arrives: Godwin is dying. Bella leaves Paris and returns to London without hesitation. She discovers Godwin has made a new creature, Felicity, because he could not stand an empty house.

Bella forgives him. She also tells Max she still wants to marry him, and he accepts her, brothel and all. For a moment, the story looks ready for a happy ending.

Movie Ending

A stranger interrupts the wedding, and Duncan stands beside him. The stranger introduces himself as Alfie Blessington, a general, and he claims Bella as his wife. Her body once belonged to Victoria Blessington, the woman who jumped from the bridge.

Bella decides to go with Alfie because she wants to know who Victoria was. Alfie’s mansion reveals the answer fast. He is a sadist who kept servants in terror, and Victoria had grown just as cruel before she chose the river over him.

Alfie refuses to let Bella leave the house. He summons a surgeon and plans to have her genitals removed so she can never feel pleasure again. He shows her a glass of chloroform-laced gin and orders her to drink.

Bella throws the drink in his face instead. He stumbles, reaches for his pistol, and shoots himself in the foot. Bella calmly wheels his unconscious body back to Godwin’s house.

Godwin dies shortly after, surrounded by Bella, Max, and Felicity. Bella inherits the house and the laboratory, and she continues her medical studies. She plans to become a surgeon in her own right.

In the final scene, Bella reads in the garden with Max, Toinette, and Felicity. A figure crawls nearby and nibbles grass. It is Alfie, now carrying the brain of a goat.

Viewers often ask whether this makes Bella a monster. The film suggests otherwise: Alfie planned to mutilate her, and she answered with a surgery of her own. She has become the creator rather than the creation, and she chose her own family.

Are There Post-Credits Scenes?

No. Poor Things ends with Alfie chewing grass, and the credits roll over Jerskin Fendrix’s score without any additional footage. Once the goat joke lands, you can safely leave the theater or close the app.

Type of Movie

Poor Things is a gothic science fiction comedy with strong coming-of-age bones. Lanthimos blends Victorian horror imagery, steampunk fantasy, and explicit sexual satire into something deliberately strange.

Its tone swings between slapstick and sincere. One scene plays like a Buster Keaton bit; the next lands as a serious argument about autonomy and class. Expect dark laughs, frank nudity, and moments of real tenderness.

Cast

Emma Stone – Bella Baxter
Mark Ruffalo – Duncan Wedderburn
Willem Dafoe – Godwin Baxter
Ramy Youssef – Max McCandles
Christopher Abbott – Alfie Blessington
Suzy Bemba – Toinette
Jerrod Carmichael – Harry Astley
Kathryn Hunter – Madame Swiney
Vicki Pepperdine – Mrs. Prim
Margaret Qualley – Felicity
Hanna Schygulla – Martha Von Kurtzroc

Film Music and Composer

Jerskin Fendrix composed the score, and it was his first feature film assignment. He is a British musician known for experimental art-pop, and Lanthimos recruited him before shooting began so the music could shape the mood on set.

His score bends and warps in ways that mirror Bella’s mind. Strings slide out of tune, synthesizers wobble, and simple melodies curdle into something uneasy. Notable cues include the Lisbon dance music and the recurring theme that swells whenever Bella grasps a new idea.

Critics took notice. Fendrix earned nominations for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, and the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, a remarkable debut for a composer with no prior film credits.

Filming Locations

Lanthimos shot almost the entire film inside Origo Studios in Budapest, Hungary. Lisbon, Alexandria, the cruise ship, and Paris were all built as sets on sound stages rather than filmed on location.

This decision shapes the whole look of the film. Production designers Shona Heath and James Price created cities that feel like memories or dreams: tram cables in the sky, candy-colored skylines, and painted backdrops instead of horizons.

Bella is seeing the world for the first time, and the artificial sets put the audience in her position. Nothing looks quite like the real Lisbon because Bella has no idea what the real Lisbon should look like.

Awards and Nominations

Poor Things won the Golden Lion at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, the top prize there. It then collected the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and Emma Stone won Best Actress in the same category.

At the Academy Awards, the film received eleven nominations and won four: Best Actress for Stone, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. It also won multiple BAFTAs, including Leading Actress for Stone.

Behind the Scenes Insights

Lanthimos spent more than a decade trying to make the film. He visited author Alasdair Gray in Glasgow around 2009 to discuss the rights.
Emma Stone served as a producer in addition to starring. She and Lanthimos had already made The Favourite together.
Screenwriter Tony McNamara also wrote The Favourite, and his taste for profane period dialogue carries over.
Cinematographer Robbie Ryan shot on 35mm film and used extreme fisheye lenses, including a 4mm lens, for the most distorted shots.
Willem Dafoe sat for hours of prosthetic makeup each day to create Godwin’s scarred face.
Stone worked with choreographer Constanza Macras on the Lisbon dance, and the routine stayed deliberately ungraceful.
The black-and-white opening act reflects Bella’s limited world, and color arrives only when she leaves the house.

Inspirations and References

The film adapts Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel Poor Things, which won the Whitbread Novel Award. Gray was a Scottish writer and painter, and his book plays with Victorian conventions while satirizing them.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sits underneath everything. Godwin Baxter’s name nods to William Godwin, Shelley’s father, and the reanimated body obviously echoes Victor Frankenstein’s creature.

Lanthimos has also cited silent cinema and painters like Egon Schiele as visual references. Bella’s dresses, with their enormous sleeves and bare legs, borrow from Victorian silhouettes while ignoring Victorian modesty.

Alternate Endings and Deleted Scenes

No official alternate ending exists for Poor Things, and Lanthimos has not released a director’s cut. The theatrical version runs about 141 minutes and reflects his intended shape for the story.

Some footage from the lengthy shoot never made the final edit, which is standard for a film of this scale. Searchlight has not issued a formal collection of deleted scenes, so fans should treat online rumors with caution.

Book Adaptations and Differences

Yes, Poor Things is based on Alasdair Gray’s novel, and the differences are significant. Gray sets the story in Glasgow and frames it as a found manuscript written by Archibald McCandless, the character the film renames Max.

Crucially, the novel ends with a letter from Bella herself, who insists the entire Frankenstein tale is her husband’s fantasy. She claims she was never resurrected at all. Gray leaves readers to decide who is telling the truth.

The film drops this unreliable framing entirely. Lanthimos tells the story from Bella’s point of view and treats the brain transplant as fact. He also expands the Paris brothel chapter and invents the goat-brain punishment for Alfie.

Memorable Scenes and Quotes

Key Scenes

Bella’s first discovery of self-pleasure at the dinner table, which scandalizes the household.
Her chaotic dance with Duncan in a Lisbon ballroom.
Harry Astley showing Bella the starving poor from the deck of the ship.
Bella’s first day at the Paris brothel, played for both laughs and discomfort.
Her calm refusal of the chloroform gin and Alfie’s self-inflicted gunshot.
Godwin’s death scene, with Bella finally calling him father.

Iconic Quotes

“I must go punch that baby.”
“We are all cruel beasts.”
“I am finding being alive fascinating.”
“How wonderful it is to be alive.”

Easter Eggs and Hidden Details

Godwin’s name and nickname together form “God,” underlining his role as a flawed creator.
The hybrid animals in the garden (duck-dog, goat-goose) foreshadow the goat-brained Alfie at the end.
Lisbon’s skyline includes a tram suspended on cables in the air, an impossible detail that signals a dreamscape.
Bella’s handwriting improves across the letters she sends home, tracking her mental growth.
Godwin blows huge bubbles from a belching contraption at dinner, hinting that his own body was surgically altered by his father.
Watch the fisheye shots: they appear most often when a character spies on someone else, turning the audience into a voyeur.

Trivia

Poor Things earned Emma Stone her second Academy Award for Best Actress, following La La Land.
Lanthimos and Stone also made a short film, Bleat (2022), between The Favourite and this project.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2023.
Searchlight Pictures released it in the United States on December 8, 2023 with an R rating.
Mark Ruffalo earned Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor.
Hanna Schygulla, who plays Martha, is a legend of German cinema and a frequent star of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films.

Why Watch?

Few films dare to be this funny, this explicit, and this thoughtful at the same time. Emma Stone gives a fearless, career-defining performance, and every frame looks like a painting from a world that never existed. Watch it for the laughs; stay for the ideas.

Poor Things (2023)