8 Wildest Sex Scenes in Poor Things, Ranked

Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’ is a twisted tale that untangles the complex life story of a woman named Bella Baxter. A child in the body of a grown woman, Bella sees the world from a unique perspective. As her brain starts to grow, new doors are opened to her, and she decides to be an adventurer, an explorer. This adventure and exploration, in large part in the movie, depends on her sexual awakening. As a result, the film is full of sex scenes, all of which are wild in their own way, and each holds a significant meaning to Bella’s story. SPOILERS AHEAD

8. Bella and Toinette

One of the running themes of ‘Poor Things’ is Bella’s relationship with the men around her. From being sheltered by God, who tries to hand her over to Max McCandles, to her sexual escapade with Duncan Wedderburn, it seems like Bella’s life is only defined by the men around her. Once in Paris, she starts to taste the freedom of being on her own after throwing Duncan out of her life, but because of all the sex, men still remain a highlight in her story.

After a montage of seeing her have sex with all kinds of men, it is refreshing to see her with Toinette, not just because the latter is a woman but also because this is the first time that Bella seems to be on equal grounds with the person she is having sex with. When she was with Duncan, the power dynamics were in his favor. The same dynamics continue when she starts working at Swiney’s. But with Toinette, it is something much more intimate and meaningful because, by now, she is much wiser, not just about the world but also about herself.

7. Bella and the Crab Man

Weird would be an understatement for Bella Baxter’s story, but even in that, there are times when something ridiculously weirder happens. Bella’s experience at Swiney’s shows her that sex work isn’t necessarily always about sex. The room and time with her is the space for her clients to act on the desires they wouldn’t want anyone else to know about. The Crab Man is one of them. The scene with him shows Bella lying half-naked on the couch while the man walks back and forth like a crab and eats her hair when she looks away. Of all the sex scenes in the movie, this scene sets itself apart simply because of its weirdness.

6. Bella and the BDSM Guy

Once Bella gets the job at Swiney’s, the montage of sex scenes presents the variety of experiences she has there. One of these scenes shows Bella being tied up and gagged, barely dressed. It clearly shows the dominance and submission kink of her client, but what makes things a bit awkward, so to speak, is that her client is more interested in humping her leg. It’s a fleeting scene, but it does a great job of displaying the variety of the clients at Swiney’s and Bella’s reaction, which is somewhere between her irritation and the commonplace-ness of the act, which adds to the depth of the scene.

5. Bella and Monsieur Saveur

When Bella approaches Swiney with a job application, she has an inkling that sex will not be quite as fun as it was with Duncan. She realizes that not all men are good at it, not like Duncan, at least, in her first encounter during a test run, when she discovers that she can make money from sex. Even then, her experience had been very limited. It is when she actually gets the job and has her first official client that she realizes there are more ways than two that sex can go. It’s quite an eye-opener for her.

4. Bella and the Priest

When Bella comes under the employment of Swiney, she quickly realizes that sex for money is not going to be anything like it was with Duncan. She has a lot of experience with different types of clients, but even in the midst of all that, she finds someone who has a gift for it, just like Duncan did. She comes to appreciate it more because, by now, she has had some rough experiences. She lets the client know it, too, telling him that God has given him a gift. But it turns out to be an ironic compliment (though Bella is most probably unaware of it) when it is revealed that the man in question is a priest.

3. Bella and Duncan’s Siesta in Lisbon

Bella had always wanted to escape the walls of the Baxter household, to venture into the world and experience it in all its glory. It isn’t until Duncan Wedderburn walks into her life that she finally has the chance to put some color in her otherwise monotonous days. He whisks her away on a trip to Lisbon, and this is where her education in sex and pleasure truly begins. While they have sex before reaching Lisbon, it is when they reach the city that they really go at it, so much so that Bella starts to wonder why people don’t just have sex all the time!

2. Bella and the Apple

While Bella may have been in the body of an adult, her mind remains that of a child. Curious as she is, she loves to explore everything, and her true journey for exploration begins with herself. The first time Bella stumbles upon self-pleasure, she is taken completely by surprise. While doing it in the privacy of her room is one thing, doing it on the breakfast table with an apple is something else entirely. Before Bella learns that polite society would not approve of her actions, she continues with her exploration and feels that she has stumbled upon something that can make anyone happy, even the sour-faced Mrs. Prim.

1. Bella and the Man With His Sons

There are a lot of twisted things in ‘Poor Things,’ and almost everything in Bella Baxter’s crazy world is shocking and thrilling. But there are times when it feels like the film might be stretching things a bit too far. The scene that falls into that category is the one where Bella’s services as a sex worker are employed by a man who wants to educate his sons. While the rest of her clients seek the pleasure that they wouldn’t necessarily like to share with someone else, a father having his two sons watch him as he has sex with Bella is quite dumbfounding.