Giada Armante

Giada Armante, Ist "Poor Things" ein feministischer Film?, 2024, 22:18 (German/English)


"Ideas are banging around in Bella’s head and heart like lights and storm." At the moment of her intellectual awakening, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) expresses a feeling that struck me immediately after my first viewing of Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023). The more I reflected on the film, the stronger this feeling became. I was captivated by its numerous references to gender politics and the humorous portrayal of the various male figures in the protagonist’s life. At the same time, a sense of disappointment crept in—an uncertainty about whether the film truly delivered on what the trailer had promised: a story of female self-liberation.

While Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023) was criticized by film critics for commodifying feminism, Poor Things received overwhelmingly positive reviews (see, for example, Wolfgang M. Schmitt’s analysis, "Why POOR THINGS is the Better Barbie"). This contrast led me to question how feminism is defined in today’s, in many ways regressive, society—who holds the authority over this definition, and, most importantly, whether Poor Things holds up under the scrutiny of feminist film theory.

At first, I wasn’t sure whether the question “Is Poor Things a feminist film?” would be a fruitful one. However, it gave me the opportunity to engage more deeply with feminist film theory—something I had long wanted to explore. Until then, my engagement with feminist film criticism had been mostly peripheral: reading occasional articles, discussing the limitations of tools like the Bechdel-Wallace Test with friends, but never systematically studying the foundations of feminist film theory to analyze a film in depth. Nina Menkes’ documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022) sparked my interest in examining Poor Things not only in terms of its content but also in relation to its formal aesthetic composition.

Giada Armante, Ist "Poor Things" ein feministischer Film?, 2024, 22:18 (German/English)


"Ideas are banging around in Bella’s head and heart like lights and storm." At the moment of her intellectual awakening, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) expresses a feeling that struck me immediately after my first viewing of Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023). The more I reflected on the film, the stronger this feeling became. I was captivated by its numerous references to gender politics and the humorous portrayal of the various male figures in the protagonist’s life. At the same time, a sense of disappointment crept in—an uncertainty about whether the film truly delivered on what the trailer had promised: a story of female self-liberation.

While Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023) was criticized by film critics for commodifying feminism, Poor Things received overwhelmingly positive reviews (see, for example, Wolfgang M. Schmitt’s analysis, "Why POOR THINGS is the Better Barbie"). This contrast led me to question how feminism is defined in today’s, in many ways regressive, society—who holds the authority over this definition, and, most importantly, whether Poor Things holds up under the scrutiny of feminist film theory.

At first, I wasn’t sure whether the question “Is Poor Things a feminist film?” would be a fruitful one. However, it gave me the opportunity to engage more deeply with feminist film theory—something I had long wanted to explore. Until then, my engagement with feminist film criticism had been mostly peripheral: reading occasional articles, discussing the limitations of tools like the Bechdel-Wallace Test with friends, but never systematically studying the foundations of feminist film theory to analyze a film in depth. Nina Menkes’ documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022) sparked my interest in examining Poor Things not only in terms of its content but also in relation to its formal aesthetic composition.

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