Poor Things Sex Scenes: Emma Stone in Lisbon, Paris and With Toinette

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in the Poor Things Lisbon sex scene (0:22). The other 9 scenes from the film are further down the page.

Poor Things is the film that won Emma Stone her second Best Actress Oscar, and it is packed with sex scenes: Bella Baxter in a Lisbon hotel bed with Mark Ruffalo, Bella working her way through the clients of a Paris brothel, and Bella falling for Toinette. I have put every scene worth watching on this page: 10 clips in HD, each with its length and what actually happens in it, starting with the famous furious jumping. If Emma Stone is why you came, my Emma Stone nude scenes page has the rest of her career too.

Furious Jumping in Lisbon: Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo (0:22)

Lisbon | With: Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn

This is the one. Bella has just run off with Duncan Wedderburn, the smooth, sleazy lawyer played by Mark Ruffalo, and the first thing she does in Lisbon is find out what all the fuss is about. She sits on top of him in a big carved four-poster bed, topless, her long black hair swinging down her back, and rides him with total focus while the afternoon light pours in through the shutters. Her face goes from concentration to wide-eyed shock to pure delight, and then Lanthimos cuts to a fisheye shot of the whole room as if the hotel itself were watching. Bella calls it furious jumping, and the phrase stuck. Stone plays it with zero embarrassment and perfect comic timing, which is exactly why it became the most talked-about sex scene of 2023.

Why does this one go first? Because it is the scene everybody means when they talk about Poor Things. Variety reported that some people walked out of the Venice premiere during the racier scenes, and the same screening ended with an eight-minute standing ovation. This clip is a big part of both.

Every Other Sex and Nude Scene in Poor Things

Here is the rest, in the order it plays in the film: the rest of Lisbon first, then Paris, where Bella goes to work at Madame Swiney’s and meets Toinette.

More Furious Jumping in the Hotel Bed (0:29)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo

Lisbon again, and Bella wants more. This clip opens on her face mid-moan, cuts to the fisheye lens looking down the length of the room while the two of them go at it on the bed, and then moves in close: Ruffalo on top, Stone on her back with her eyes shut and her mouth open, both of them sweaty and laughing by the end. It is the scene that sells how much of the Lisbon chapter is spent in bed, and how quickly Duncan starts to realise he cannot keep up with her.

Duncan Goes Down on Bella (0:10)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo

Before the jumping starts, Duncan has something to show her. Bella stands by the bed in a frilly white blouse and a long skirt, he kneels in front of her and disappears under the hem, and the camera cuts to her face as she works out that this is a whole new kind of fun. It is short and mostly clothed, but the close-up of Stone’s reaction does all the work, and the last shots are a tight view of her hips and the little tattoo-like mark on her skin.

The Brothel Line-Up (0:06)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone, Kathryn Hunter

Paris. Broke after the cruise, Bella walks into Madame Swiney’s brothel and starts working there. Here the women stand in a line in their robes and corsets, several of them topless, while the man of the house looks them over from the doorway. Stone stands in the middle in a huge yellow ruffled cape. It is only a few seconds long, but it sets up the whole Paris chapter and its very different idea of what sex is for.

Bella and Her First Client (0:49)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone

Bella’s first customer in Paris is an older man who takes his time undressing in the corner of a gaudy little room, all lamps and wallpaper, while Bella waits by the window, topless, with her hair loose over her shoulders. Then it cuts to a close-up of her face during the act, flat and curious rather than thrilled. That contrast with Lisbon is the point of the scene, and Stone plays it so dry that it is funny and a little sad at the same time.

A Client by the Bed (0:08)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone

Another room, another client. A naked man stands at the side of a big dark bed while Bella lies across it in her white petticoats, propped up on the pillows, looking at him the way she looks at everything in Paris: like an experiment. The whole clip is one slow, wide shot of the room and the low lamplight, so it is more about the mood of the brothel than about bodies.

On the Brothel Sofa (0:12)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone

Lanthimos opens this one through a round fisheye lens, like a keyhole looking into the room, and then cuts to Bella lying on her back on a green brocade sofa, topless, her legs up in the air and her long hair spilling onto the floor. It is a few seconds of pure Poor Things: absurd, theatrical and very naked.

The Tattooed Client (0:17)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone

A heavily tattooed client sits on the end of the bed while Bella lies stretched out beside him in a patterned dressing gown, then he lies down next to her and the two of them talk in the low light. There is not much nudity here, but it is one of the stranger brothel encounters in the film, and Stone’s deadpan face against his painted one makes it hard to look away.

On the Brothel Bed (0:11)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone

A short, close sex scene on the brothel bed: a client on top, Bella underneath on a pile of dark green velvet cushions, the camera locked tight on the two of them. Bella’s expression says she is thinking about something else entirely, which is the running joke of her whole time at Madame Swiney’s.

Bella and Toinette (0:37)

Poor Things (2023) | With: Emma Stone, Suzy Bemba

The best scene of the Paris chapter. Toinette, the sharp, funny fellow worker played by Suzy Bemba, becomes Bella’s friend and then her lover, and here the two of them are together on a gold daybed in their room at the brothel. It starts with a wide shot of the two women on the bed, then Toinette goes down on her and the camera stays on Bella’s face as she melts into the cushions, half dressed in a loose white shirt. The last shots are the two of them lying together and laughing. It is the warmest sex scene in the film, and the only one where Bella is with someone who actually likes her.

What I Left Out

This page sticks to Bella’s time in Lisbon and Paris, after she leaves Godwin Baxter’s house, which is where the film’s sex scenes really are. The black-and-white London scenes from the first act are not here. I also skipped a brothel clip where Bella is tied up and gagged by a client, a clothed brothel scene with no nudity, and two long fan supercuts that only repeat the clips above.

Why Poor Things Still Gets Watched

It was a genuine hit for such a strange film: about $117 million worldwide on a $35 million budget, Lanthimos’s biggest film so far. It won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2023, then four Oscars out of eleven nominations, with Stone taking Best Actress, plus Best Actress at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. It sits at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Glamour wrote that Stone was praised for her hilariously bold and fearless sex scenes. Not everyone loved it, and plenty of critics argued about what the sex was supposed to mean. But that argument is half the reason people still search for these scenes. Stone said Bella was the most joyous character she ever played because she has no shame about anything, and you can see it in every clip above.

About Poor Things (2023)

Poor Things was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos from a screenplay by Tony McNamara, based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a woman brought back to life by the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who runs off to see the world with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Stone was also one of the producers. It was filmed from August to December 2021, mostly on soundstages at Origo Studios in Budapest, and it was the first feature film partly shot on Kodak’s revived 35mm Ektachrome stock, which is where the wild colours come from. Fun fact: Stone dyed her hair black by accident while preparing for the part, and Lanthimos liked it so much that he kept it. Searchlight Pictures released it in US cinemas on December 8, 2023, after its premiere in Venice that September, and it came to Hulu in the US on March 7, 2024. It runs 142 minutes.

Actor	Character
Emma Stone	Bella Baxter
Mark Ruffalo	Duncan Wedderburn
Willem Dafoe	Dr. Godwin Baxter
Ramy Youssef	Max McCandles
Christopher Abbott	Alfie Blessington
Suzy Bemba	Toinette
Jerrod Carmichael	Harry Astley
Kathryn Hunter	Madame Swiney
Margaret Qualley	Felicity
Hanna Schygulla	Martha von Kurtzroc

More Movie Sex Scenes

For the rest of Emma Stone, start with my Emma Stone nude scenes page. Lanthimos and Stone made Kinds of Kindness straight after this one, and it is just as strange. For more big-screen heat, try Black Swan, Nosferatu, The Voyeurs and Fifty Shades of Grey. Everything else is in the celebrity movie archive.

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