With apologies for the 30-year-old spoiler, the question of whether Bella’s adventures in Poor Things are merely a middle-aged male fantasy (‘She’s bound and gagged for laughs’: is Poor Things a feminist masterpiece – or an offensive male sex fantasy?, 24 January) was the original point of Alasdair Gray’s novel and his own unmade 1993 screenplay (the latter eventually published in 2009’s A Gray Play Book). After the narrative adapted in the Yorgos Lanthimos/Tony McNamara version, the real Bella writes back with her own non-fantastical story of her actual life, of which the version we see in the film is merely the fantasy of the Ramy Youssef character. Or is it? Gray and his archivist colleague (fictionally) fall out over which version is the truth.
Nick Lowe
London
• Congratulations on the magnificent spread of views on Poor Things from your array of cultural commentators. Now readers can choose whether to grab a cinema seat and judge for themselves between Samira Ahmed’s “A man forces his young sons to watch him have sex with Bella”, and what caused Ann Lee growing unease: “Bella … jauntily helping a father school his young sons on how to pleasure a woman”.
Lesley Brown
Oxford
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