[KMDb] - Heavenly Homecoming of Poor Things

Published December 18th, 2024 - Source

By Gina Kim (Professor at UCLA, Director)

I don’t know about those things—
I don’t know anything at all.
But somehow, I feel scared.
Please, say no more of those words.
I truly don’t want to know.
I’ve only heard about it.
My heart is pounding.
Please stop speaking.
I’m too young - just nineteen.
I don’t know how to put on makeup.
This is all new to me.
I don’t know why I feel this way.
Don’t come closer.
Let’s talk from a distance.
My face is getting hot.
My mom would be angry.
But I still want to hear it.
The word “love”—I don’t hate it.

"I am nineteen years old" (나는 열아홉살이에요), performed by Yoon Si-nae and composed by Lee Jang-hee.

It is the theme song of Heavenly Homecoming to Stars (별들의 고향)

The portrayal of women in Korean cinema has undergone significant fluctuations. In the modern era, women who dared to pursue their desires often met tragic ends (Footnote 1), while innocent but uneducated girls inevitably ended up in brothels. Is there another country as fixated as Korea on stories of pure women meeting their downfall? This obsession crystallized into a genre in the 1970s and 1980s through the so-called “hostess melodramas,” such as <Youngja’s Heyday > and <Heavenly Homecoming to Stars>. The extraordinary success of <Waterloo Bridge>, starring Vivien Leigh, in Korea alone is particularly telling. Blue-eyed colleagues who study Korean cinema often ask if I’ve seen this film. How could I not? It was as much a staple of weekend television as <Ben-Hur> or <Lawrence of Arabia>. Yet in the U.S., I’ve never encountered anyone outside the realm of Korean film studies who has even heard of it.

From the 1990s onward, a new type of female character emerged—one portrayed as either developmentally disabled or so naive that she seemed trapped in a childlike intellect. Films that romanticized the Korean War often featured young girls, adorned with flowers in their hair, innocently frolicking through villages—a visual staple. (Footnote 2) These girls, akin to canaries in a coal mine, are invariably the first to die when violence disrupts their fairytale communities. Descendants of Kyung-ah, the naive protagonist in <Heavenly Homecoming to Stars> who famously asked, "Why do men have nipples if they don’t need them?", evolved into the "bagel girls" of the 21st century. With voluptuous adult bodies and childlike faces, their very moniker—a blend of “baby” and “glamour”—exudes an unsettling posthuman aura. These women are objects, molded at will for the convenience of men.

The fate of Kyung-ah and her ilk was sealed by their naivety, encapsulated in lyrics like, “I don’t know, I really don’t know, my mother will be angry.” Too naive even for divine intervention, Kyung-ah’s prayer before having sex—“Please let me be happy, please don’t let him abandon me”—was a desperate substitute for what she truly needed: condoms, a recording device, and a lawyer. Her heartfelt plea to the mirror went unanswered. Naturally, this was framed as her own fault, the fault of “knowing nothing.” Society never ceases to remind her of this, reinforcing her self-imposed label of “fallen woman.” Her descent, borne of shame and guilt, spirals endlessly, while the world moves forward in its relentless march of progress, indifferent to her plight.

This, perhaps, is why the theme song from <Heavenly Homecoming to Stars> played in my mind while watching <Poor Things>. Bella, brought to life with a Mary Shelley-esque imagination (Footnote 3), inhabits the reanimated body of a deceased woman with the fetal brain from the same womb implanted in her skull. While her body is that of an adult, her mind is that of an infant. Clumsy and unsteady at first, Bella keenly absorbs stimuli and develops through oral, anal, and genital phases, becoming a fully formed, endlessly sensual adult woman. At this stage, she appears to be the perfect partner for objectifying male fantasies. However, the twist lies in her lack of memory and trauma—she is a woman without shame, guilt, or societal conditioning. While she truly “knows nothing,” her experiences become nothing more than amusing episodes in the adventure of her life.

Bella’s freedom from shame and guilt is starkly evident in the depiction of her childlike sexuality. Like a curious child pulling the legs off insects, her uninhibited sexual appetite is deeply unsettling. It recalls Lara, the long-haired girl from Choi Eun-mi’s short story <Lara’s Home> Lara, driven by emotional neglect, engages in ceaseless acts of self-pleasure, while her mother, with words verging on curses, instills shame and guilt into the young child, no older than a kindergartener. Bella, however, has no such mother. Later, her fiancé firmly informs her that public masturbation is inappropriate, planting the first seed of social etiquette in Bella’s understanding of the world. Thus, the concept of societal propriety begins to take root. 

Bella's life demonstrates the ultimate path for a woman who refuses to condemn herself or remain bound by her past, no matter the circumstances. Fully aware of the ulterior motives of Duncan Wedderburn (played by Mark Ruffalo)—who tempts her with the clichéd promise of showing her the world beyond her home and laboratory—Bella still accepts his invitation to Lisbon. Despite Duncan engaging in what he dubs “furious jumping,” their torrid sexual escapades do not culminate in exploitation. Instead, it is Duncan who fails to keep up with the unbounded nature of Bella's desires. Growing bored, Bella leaves him to rest while she ventures out on her own.

Immersing herself in the world, Bella experiences its sensory stimuli—the smells and tastes of food, the vivid visuals of the city, its cacophony—all of which provoke her accelerated mental development. Her mind, rapidly advancing through the stages of infancy and adolescence, matures. Upon entering intellectual adulthood, her once-insatiable sexual appetite transforms into a yearning for knowledge. Preferring reading over “furious jumping,” Bella prompts Duncan's discontent, yet her intellectual hunger propels her like a launched rocket, following its trajectory into ever-expanding realms of discovery. Onboard the cruise ship, Bella finds her first-ever friend in Harry (played by Jerrod Carmichael), a young man of refined manners who serves as a catalyst for her curiosity. Guided by Harry, she disembarks for the first time to confront the inequities and absurdities of the world, and she experiences the emotion of compassion—a sensation entirely new to her. Overwhelmed, she begins to act on her feelings. Her decision to distribute her casino winnings to the poor, while romantic and arguably naive, is nonetheless genuine and beyond reproach.

However, Bella's impulsive acts of charity lead to both her and Duncan's financial ruin, resulting in their expulsion from the luxury cruise ship. Somehow making their way to Paris, the pair find themselves destitute and without any means of production. Faced with the dire necessity of confronting capitalism head-on, Bella's "choice" comes down to utilizing the only resource at her disposal: her own body. The concept of "choice" is a curious one. For a young woman transitioning from girlhood to womanhood, choices need to be framed as options with equal pros and cons—whether to pursue higher education, get married, study abroad, continue a family business, or start a career. But when the alternatives are as stark as starving to death on the street or engaging in prostitution, it ceases to be a true choice. Such scenarios leave no room for alternatives; they are, more accurately, situations of no choice. Just as some suicides are, in essence, murders, labeling prostitution as a "choice" for a young woman gaslit into believing she is unworthy of anything else reduces systemic coercion to individual agency. In this context, the word "choice" becomes a tool of violence—absolving a broken system of its faults while placing the burden squarely on the individual. In the flawed system of South Korea's rapid economic development—a society lacking in human rights—prostitution was never a voluntary "choice" for figures like Kyung-a or Young-ja. Instead, it was an act born of implicit societal coercion and sustained by collective indifference.

Bella transforms even the entrenched tradition of societal violence into a self-directed experiment in life. The concept of voluntary prostitution, an exceedingly dangerous and controversial premise, provokes the audience's discomfort and raises the question of whether the numerous explicit scenes were necessary to prove her experimental approach. At the heart of all these scenarios, however, lies Bella's insatiable existential thirst for life—akin to Belle de Jour's Séverine (from Belle de Jour, directed by Luis Buñuel)—who becomes a voluntary sex worker out of boredom and a desire to fulfill her sexual fantasies (Footnote 4). Bella’s experiment pushes her to the extreme, ushering her life into a new chapter. Guided by her coworker and fellow sex worker Toinette (played by Suzy Bemba), Bella encounters socialism and begins to transform her romantic compassion into a more conscious, ideological awareness. During their breaks, the two women attend socialist conventions, only to be confronted by Duncan, who reappears despite having supposedly returned to London. When Duncan proposes marriage and Bella refuses, he shouts that she’s a prostitute. Toinette calmly corrects him, stating that she is “an independent owner of the means of production.”

Parallel to this adventurous narrative, Bella remains surprisingly faithful to her fiancé, Max, to whom she is already engaged. Remarkably honest about her past relationships—including her affair with Duncan and her experiences with prostitution—Bella is candid with Max, who accepts her unconditionally. Bella, who embodies boundless acceptance of the world, is met with equal acceptance from Max. Their wedding scene, though less provocative than others in the film, highlights Bella's autonomy as a woman making her own choices. Wearing a beautiful white dress and holding her father Godwin's hand, Bella walks down the aisle, only to be interrupted by a man Duncan brought with him—her former husband, Alfie (played by Christopher Abbott). Alfie, who lived with Bella during a period when her body housed another woman's brain, arrives to claim her with a mixture of curiosity and ambiguous responsibility. Ignoring the objections of her father and fiancé, Bella decides to leave with Alfie.

In contrast to Heavenly Homecoming to Stars, where Kyung-a’s exploitative ex boldly declares, "I am Kyung-a’s former owner," before reclaiming her, Bella navigates freely among the men who seek to follow her. Unlike Kyung-a—who, having lost her physical and mental health, becomes a discarded commodity shuffled between men—Bella chooses and moves freely, unbound by their expectations. Whereas Kyung-a’s story ends in utter devastation with her tragic death in the snow after consuming sleeping pills, Bella's journey in Poor Things destroys not her but the men who sought to exploit her. Duncan, consumed by his obsession with Bella, self-destructs, while Alfie, who sought to reduce her to a womb for bearing his offspring through forced surgery, ends up with the brain of a goat. The archetypes of the “mother and whore,” which have long defined the dichotomy of women’s roles in human history, are thoroughly shattered.

Bella, having survived the gaslighting epitomized in the phrase "It's your fault for knowing nothing," fully embraces her life—relishing it, challenging it, and achieving her aspirations. As she matures and encounters the absurdities of the world, conquers Duncan's manipulations and society's attempts to diminish her, she continually expands her universe. What is the secret behind her ability to thrive? For Bella, who is free from guilt and shame, her strength lies instead in decency learned from Max and compassion awakened by Harry's insights into the world's injustices. Max is polite and principled but lacks the imagination to envision a world beyond boundaries. Harry, on the other hand, articulates the contradictions of society with eloquence and clarity, but he remains "a boy afraid of the world." Bella, however, is fearless. She embodies reckless and unconditional acceptance of both herself and others, a quality that ultimately leads her to forgive her father—who brought her into existence as a subject of scientific experimentation—and empowers her to resist the world's absurdities and violence. Though she acts purely on instinct, the path to freedom—one that encompasses both selfhood and connection with others—may be illuminated by the twin beacons of human decency and empathy. Bella's journey suggests that these guiding principles, rooted in respect for oneself and compassion for others, are the keys to navigating a world fraught with injustice while remaining unbroken. On a leisurely afternoon, Bella—surrounded by her beloved family, sipping a cocktail, and engaged in her favorite pursuit, the study of anatomy—might be imagined singing a new version of the “Song of a Girl Who Knows Nothing.” If she were to sing it again, the lyrics might go something like this:

I don’t know about those things—
I don’t know anything at all.
But somehow, I feel excited.
Please, say more of those words.
I truly want to know.
I want to learn more.
My heart is pounding.
Please, keep speaking.
I’m still young—just nineteen.
I don’t need makeup.
This is all new to me.
I don’t know why I feel this way.
Please, come closer.
Touch me and speak to me.
My whole body feels warm.
My mother is gone.
I want to know everything.
The word “love”— it feels kind of fun.

Let’s return to Kyung-a’s world. What would it have been like if Bella had lived through the 1970s in South Korea, just as Kyung-a did? If she had managed to survive the threat of being erased from society—perhaps through the tragedy of an early death in a violent encounter on a date—could she have grown into someone with boundless dreams, someone extraordinary? Then again, no. One cannot ignore the possibility that she might have spent her life confined to a psychiatric ward or imprisoned. Society would have relentlessly brainwashed her, repeating, “It’s your fault for knowing nothing.” And if Bella refused to accept this narrative, society might have shattered her entirely as retribution. Therefore, Bella’s existence might only be possible in the improbable, dreamlike world of Gray’s novel or Lanthimos’s film—a fantasy or a fairytale. But images and language, after all, are merely phenomena not yet realized. As Bella says, until humanity proved that the Earth was round, people believed it was flat. Until electricity was discovered, the world remained shrouded in darkness. “Until it arrives, the world believes its previous state to be eternal.” Her words are not a provocation; they are a revolution.

Footnote 1: The Housemaid (1960) and Madame Freedom (1956) are representative examples.

Footnote 2: To the Starry Island (1993) and Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005) are representative examples.

Footnote 3: Recognized as the first science fiction writer, the British female author Mary Shelley is an undeniable influence on Poor Things. Not only her seminal novel Frankenstein but also her life trajectory appears to have profoundly shaped the film. Mary Shelley's maiden name was Mary Godwin. In the film, Godwin is used as the first name of Bella’s father, whom Bella affectionately calls "God." Mary’s father, William Godwin, a progressive political thinker of the era, provided his daughter—who lost her mother at an early age—with an education that was rare for women at the time. For her intellectual growth, he even sent her to live with a radical thinker, whose surname was Baxter, the same as Bella’s in the film. At the Baxter household, Mary lived like a sister to Baxter's daughters, nurturing her sensibilities as a writer. Later, Mary Godwin fell in love with Percy Shelley, a married man who shared her father's ideals. Like Bella, Mary eloped with Percy, embarking on a European journey. After Percy’s wife passed away, Mary married him, officially becoming Mary Shelley, the name we know today. The audacious life of Mary Shelley adds another layer of intrigue when watching Poor Things, offering viewers the pleasure of uncovering her biographical and creative presence within the narrative.

Footnote 4: Belle de Jour (1967), directed by Luis Buñuel. Séverine, who lives a seemingly perfect life with her loving doctor husband and enjoys financial comfort, finds herself unable to escape a sense of emptiness. By chance, she discovers a high-end brothel where she secretly works as a sex worker during the day while her husband is at work. The brothel’s madam gives her the nickname "Belle de Jour." Based on the novel of the same name by Joseph Kessel, this controversial film masterfully combines a dreamlike narrative from the female protagonist’s perspective with Buñuel's signature irony and dark humor, making it a cinematic masterpiece.