Abstract This article proposes a reproducible mixed-methods framework for psychoanalytic film analysis that makes interpretive inference transparent, inspectable, and contestable while preserving a strict distinction between description and interpretation. Taking Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023) as its case study, it develops a locally regenerable workflow that produces a fixed-schema descriptive substrate of film form: visibility/access (mean luminance), activation (dense optical-flow intensity), temporal holding (segment duration), and contextual chroma (mean saturation). Distribution-calibrated cut points generate a regime map for navigation and anchor selection, while preregistered robustness diagnostics (±10 per cent threshold perturbation and mean-mode agreement) define limits of generalization rather than validate interpretation. Across the analysed interval of thirty segments, eleven retain their regime assignment under perturbation, whereas within-segment mixture remains extensive, with mean-mode agreement at 20 per cent, suggesting that segment-level summaries often understate perceptual dominance. Interpretation therefore proceeds through an explicit warrant chain linking quantitative signature, formal mediation, and a bounded developmental–logic hypothesis, accompanied by clear scope conditions and evidence-compatible alternatives. Freud’s stage terms are redeployed not as a linear model of character development, but as recurrent developmental logics that may overlap, interrupt, or reconfigure one another. Methodologically, the article offers a rerunnable descriptive workflow, a robustness-calibrated rule for anchor selection, and a vignette-based procedure for accountable interpretation. Analytically, it shows how Poor Things organizes access, containment, address, and agency in ways that can be interpreted with methodological discipline within digital film studies.
Deniz Çelik (Wed,) studied this question.