It is difficult to decide quite what to make of Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’ widely acclaimed and now Academy Award-winning combination of steampunk fantasy, sex comedy, and art film. Superficially it is a very silly and exaggerated comedy of manners; a broad, overly busy parody of The Bride of Frankenstein that hammers in a simplistic sort of feminism. Watch past that porcelain-thin veneer and there is a far more deliberately cynical and unattractive exercise afoot. I can honestly say that I appreciated Poor Things. I am less sure I can claim to have entirely enjoyed it.

Emma Stone plays Bella, a pregnant woman who committed suicide only to be revived by surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) with her dead adult brain replaced by the infant brain of her unborn child. As Bella’s intellect rapidly matures to match her body, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery involving a marriage proposal, an ocean cruise with a lot of sex, a stint as a sex worker, and an unexpected encounter with her former life. The story, adapted by script writer Tony McNamara from the Alasdair Gray novel, is remarkably grotesque and troublesome. Some viewers have found it needlessly objectionable; I am convinced that the objectionable elements are core to the film’s identity. While the story may involve Bella’s realisation as a powerful, intelligent, and independent woman, that realisation is built on a bedrock of infantilization, objectification, exploitation, and threats of mutilation. Despite constant moments of humour – of a particularly absurd kind – by and large this is not a pleasant watch.

Emma Stone’s performance is remarkable, and shows off a tremendous inventive streak. Her physical creation of Bella, and her ongoing development through the film, is wonderfully achieved. Mark Ruffalo is maniacally over-the-top as the raffish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn. For an actor who is typically quite subdued, it is something of a shock to see him so wildly exaggerated. It is between the two of them that the film finds its best comedic combination. Willem Dafoe is, of course, on much more familiar territory playing grotesque absurdity.

Lanthimos wears his artistic influences freely and obviously: the shadow of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992) hangs heavily over its artificial, pseudo-archaic aesthetic. At the same time I also found myself reminded of Sally Potter’s Orlando (also 1992), in its heightened sense of reality and episodic tracking of its protagonist’s development. However one takes the film’s actual content, it is beautifully designed and realised. Gorgeous sets, costumes, and backdrops abound. Such delights, however, do feel stretched over a near two-and-a-half hour running time – particularly when there is so little substance to the piece.

Assessing Poor Things as a feminist work, as many have already done, is a thorny problem that I find difficult to resolve. For one thing, it abounds in gross thefts of bodily autonomy. It aggressively exploits its female protagonist, and even when she breaks free from patriarchal control it is still on the terms of that male-directed and dominated environment. Critically the film’s climax is a trite act of revenge rather than what I felt was needed – which is a rejection of the film’s entire premise. Lanthimos seems satisfied to parody patriarchy, but not to propose an alternative.