Screenplay Structure Analysis
Poor Things
A woman brought back to life with an infant's brain by an eccentric surgeon embarks on a journey of self-discovery, sexual awakening, and intellectual growth across Europe, ultimately confronting her past and claiming autonomy over her own existence.
Tone
Darkly comedic, surreal, provocative, and ultimately humanistic—blending Frankenstein-esque body horror with bawdy sexual comedy and sincere emotional growth
Tension curve
Dramatic intensity across Poor Things from first page to last, sampled at 40 points on a 0–10 scale. Values: 6.5, 5.5, 4.6, 4.2, 5, 6.3, 6.1, 5.6, 4.8, 5.1, 5.6, 5.7, 5.1, 4.9, 4.6, 4.7, 4.6, 5, 5.4, 4.8, 5.1, 5.1, 5.8, 5.7, 5.9, 6.1, 5.8, 5.4, 4.7, 5.1, 5.4, 5.9, 5.7, 6.3, 6.8, 7.1, 7.3, 7.6, 7.5, 7.3.
Structure at a glance
- Inciting incident
- Page 27, 28% of the script: Bella tells Baxter she's running away with Duncan at midnight; Baxter says he'll stop her but she insists he holds her too tight and she must set herself free.
- Act 1 break
- Page 28, 29% of the script: Bella leaves Baxter's house with Duncan Wedderburn, transitioning from sheltered captivity to the wider world and sexual awakening in Lisbon.
- Midpoint
- Page 55, 56% of the script: Bella runs down the hotel stairs screaming and falling; Harry catches up and covers her mouth, and she bites down on his hand.
- Act 2 break
- Page 62, 63% of the script: Bella arrives in Paris destitute and enters the brothel, shifting from romantic adventure to survival, labor, and intellectual awakening.
- Climax
- Page 97, 99% of the script: Max operates on the unconscious Alfie to control his bleeding and remove the bullet while Bella brings in a goat and picks up a scalpel, expressing happiness to be in the surgery.
- Peak tension
- 7.6 out of 10, reached about 95% of the way through; the script averages 5.6.
- Average scene length
- 1.1 pages
Structural personality
This script follows a classic three-act Bildungsroman structure tracking Bella's evolution from infant-minded curiosity to full personhood. Act One (scenes 1-54) establishes the Gothic premise and Bella's accelerated development within Baxter's controlled environment, ending when she escapes into the world. Act Two (scenes 55-106) chronicles her sexual and emotional education through Duncan's possessive romance, the trauma of witnessing poverty in Alexandria, and her ultimate abandonment. Act Three (scenes 107-158) finds Bella achieving independence through sex work, pursuing medical education, and finally confronting both her original identity and the men who seek to control her. The structure is deceptively simple—a linear journey from London to Lisbon to Paris and back—but each location represents a stage of consciousness, making geography synonymous with psychological development.
Pacing
The script maintains brisk pacing through its 154 scenes averaging just over one page each, creating a staccato rhythm that mirrors Bella's fragmented consciousness early on and her rapid intellectual growth later. Act One moves swiftly through domestic vignettes establishing Bella's childlike state (scenes 2-14) before accelerating toward her escape. Act Two slows during the Lisbon sexual awakening (scenes 55-73) then jolts violently at the Alexandria poverty revelation (scenes 95-102), a tonal whiplash that marks Bella's loss of innocence. Act Three's Paris brothel section (scenes 106-128) uses repetitive client encounters to show both the monotony of sex work and Bella's growing detachment and intellectualism, before the final movement (scenes 132-158) tightens dramatically around the confrontation with Alfie and resolution with Baxter.
Themes
- Female autonomy and bodily agency
- The construction of identity and selfhood
- Sexual liberation vs. societal control
- The ethics of creation and scientific experimentation
- Class, poverty, and human suffering
- Love as possession vs. love as freedom
- Intellectual and emotional development
Similar shapes
Screenplays whose tension curve most closely matches Poor Things.
- American Fiction by Cord Jefferson
- The Big Short by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay
- The Lost Daughter by Maggie Gyllenhaal
Scene summaries and structural markers are generated by AI analysis of the screenplay text and may contain minor inaccuracies. ScriptGraph analyzes structure and does not reproduce screenplay text.
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