Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal taps her The Lost Daughter star Jessie Buckley for The Bride!, the second classic literary adaptation from Warner Bros this season designed to turn heads. Though “Wuthering Heights” shares this monstrous reimagining’s penchant for titular punctuation, Gyllenhaal’s sophomore effort in the director’s chair is even more “extra” in its execution. As Frankenstein author Mary Shelley (played by Jessie Buckley) tells us at the outset, this story is also one of tortured romance but is dedicated to a tortuous framing conceit that sinks the whole movie. In monochromatic interludes, Shelley breaks the fourth wall and cackles as she teases unfinished business from her landmark novel. In this context, this tale isn’t a “reinvigoration” — to borrow a descriptor from the film — of 1935’s Bride Of Frankenstein but the feminist follow-up Shelley never got to write.
From beyond the grave, Shelley possesses Ida (also played by Buckley), a young harlot living in 1930s Chicago who makes herself available to mob associates like Clyde (John Magaro) before she takes a fatal fall down a flight of stairs. At the same time, the reanimated creature “Frank” (Christian Bale) beseeches mad scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) for a female companion to ease the loneliness of his existence. They dig up Ida’s corpse and reanimate her in Euphronious’ laboratory but the memory of her past life is wiped out in the process, leaving Frank to fill in the gaps with fanciful untruths. His temper turns deadly towards a pair of agitators who attempt to assault his Bride and the couple heads east as fugitives, with Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz) hot on their trail.
For a film that posits itself as a manifesto of female liberation, The Bride! can’t seem to decide what it’s trying to say with its titular protagonist. Buckley’s frenetic performance doesn’t help either, as her character periodically gets possessed by Shelley and spits out writerly rants in Queen’s English before reverting back to a Great Lakes dialect. I’ve no doubt she’s doing what Maggie Gyllenhaal had in mind but her volatile manner of acting doesn’t allow us a way into the interior life of this heroine. The story contrives scenarios wherein Ida can be heralded as an iconoclast but if one zooms out on the narrative, it’d be difficult to say she actually has much agency here. Frank’s actions and motivations guide the vast majority of their journey and his Bride is, literally and figuratively, along for the ride as they hit the road.
If this sounds very Bonnie And Clyde, it’s safe to assume The Bride! luxuriates in the comparison, as it gleefully forefronts its cinematic references whether in-period or anachronistic. Maggie Gyllenhaal recruits her brother Jake to play a song-and-dance star à la Fred Astaire that Frank idolizes on the silver screen. Frankly, I’ll take any opportunity to see the younger Gyllenhaal sibling croon and tap dance in fictitious black-and-white talkies with names like Heartbreak Holiday and The Dubious Detective. Astaire’s frequent cohort Ginger Rogers is name-checked and even used as an alias for a time, as Ida communes with Shelley about finding her true identity. There’s an odd Young Frankenstein musical tie-in and an even odder closing credit choice in song that doesn’t even sound like a good idea on paper but is much sillier in execution.
Buckley’s the favorite to win Best Actress this weekend and it’s hard not to see the influence that projects by two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone had on this movie. Poor Things was its own uninhibited riff on Bride Of Frankenstein but that film took the effort to put its regenerated heroine through a meaningful arc and made her tale of discovery unforgettable. The Bride! also revels in the female-fronted punk-lite provocation of Cruella, which itself borrowed heavily from the mythology recontextualization of Todd Phillips’s Joker. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Gyllenhaal called on that film’s cinematographer Lawrence Sher and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir to closely emulate that box office smash’s towering presentation. “Never was there a tale so fine as The Bride and her Frankenstein,” Shelley bellows at one point but on the basis of The Bride!, I can’t say I’m convinced.
Score – 2/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Reminders Of Him, a romantic drama starring Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers, following a woman recently released from prison who attempts to reconnect with her young daughter and finds love while trying to escape her troubled past.
Also playing in theaters is Undertone, a supernatural horror movie starring Nina Kiri and Adam DiMarco, telling the story of a host of a popular paranormal podcast who becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way.
Streaming on Shudder is Bodycam, a horror film starring Jaime Callica and Sean Rogerson, in which two police officers attempt to cover up an accidental shooting after investigating a domestic dispute but find the cameras aren’t the only things watching them.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup