Day: September 3, 2023

“Emma Stone Creates One of Cinema’s Most Shamelessly Sexual Characters in Poor Things”

“She reveals herself to be one of cinema’s horniest legends, fucking her way across the European seaboard. Stone’s performance matches that fearlessness; she goes for broke here, cumming loudly, her body and face hitting every note of the human sexual experience — thrill, disappointment, disgust, horror, intrigue. She’s often totally nude, most notably during a delirious second-act turn as a hyper-intellectual French prostitute studying socialism and Goethe while dabbling in S&M, role-play, lesbianism, and being disinterestedly hung from the ceiling. As one character describes it, it’s all an unapologetic “diabolical fuckfest” that answers the oft-posted extreme-bummer of a Twitter thread about “unnecessary sex scenes” with one long, screaming orgasm.”

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Here is what the deleted Reddit post said:

I’m going to preface this by saying this is the most sustained nudity from an A-list Oscar winning actress I’ve seen in my lifetime.

There’s so much nudity from Emma Stone that I can’t really list all the individual scenes, but I’ll do the best I can in chronological order.

Stone’s character (Bella) is unconscious when being carried to a bed, her right breast visible. She is then stripped nude by a maid, revealing both breasts. She then wakes up the morning after and removes the blanket that was covering her, revealing both breasts again. Bella then begins to figure out how to masturbate. Further exploring this, she goes into the kitchen and masturbates with an apple (with very stylized close-ups of her facial expressions and mouth when she reaches orgasm) and then with a cucumber. She is clothed at this time however.

Stone is fully nude on a table during a flashback to Bella’s Frankenstein-esque resurrection – however, only breasts are visible.

Montage of sex scenes between Stone and Mark Ruffalo in multiple positions (cowgirl, doggie, missionary). Topless and rear nudity. During one segment where Stone is riding Ruffalo on an Ottoman, Ruffalo is licking her left nipple.

Later on, Stone strips off her pants to entice Ruffalo to have sex. Frontal nudity (might be a merkin).

Much later on, Bella begins to work at a Paris brothel. Multiple sex scenes with customers. First scene is missionary with only bush nudity. Second is her getting fucked from behind by a fat dude – rear nudity. Another scene involves her riding a priest – topless nudity. Another involves her having her hands chained up while her customer humps…her leg – full frontal nudity. Another one (probably the most objectionable scene) involves a dad who decides to bring along his two sons so he can teach them all about sex, and describes everything he and Bella are doing in detail while they take notes – topless nudity. In between the sex scenes are scenes where she and the other prostitutes are being paraded for customers – Stone shows breasts in most of these.

Finally, Bella experiments with lesbianism. She gets fondled/licked by her madam while topless on a bed, and then gets eaten out by her prostitute friend – don’t remember if that latter scene had nudity.

Overall, it’s like Emma Stone saw her friend Jennifer Lawrence’s full frontal beach scene in No Hard Feelings and said “Challenge, accepted.” Poor Things is a contender for best nudity of the decade, if not the century – especially for a film with Oscar-nominated (if not winning) talent in front and behind the camera and is being prepped for an Oscar campaign by Searchlight.

By the way, this film is currently rated 100% at Rotten Tomatoes, and 94 on Metacritic.