The Bride!

Grade: C

The Bride! is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second film as a writer/director. She came out of the gate very strongly with The Lost Daughter. However, I don’t know what in the Mary Shelley she’s going for here. Several of the images we are shown in the supremely fun trailer look intriguing but confusing. Nonetheless, I trusted that we’d be provided more context. Nope. Much of the weirder stuff appears in the movie the exact same way as the ads. It’s as if Gyllenhaal started with a terrific trailer, stretched it out to feature length, but didn’t bother to make it make more sense.

It opens with an odd black-and-white sequence. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, is speaking to us from the afterlife. There’s a story she wanted to tell, but never got to, due to her death. It’s a sequel to Frankenstein. To tell the story at last, she possesses a woman named Ida, who becomes the titular character. I was never sure if the story was unfolding in real life via spiritual intervention, or if what we see IS her story, exactly as she envisioned it. For some reason, Jessie Buckley plays both Mary Shelley and Ida. We first meet Ida in 1936 Chicago, at a party. Buckley hams it up with the possession thing, even changing accents, then is pushed down a flight of stairs to her death.

Meanwhile, Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s creature, now over 100 years old, has arrived in Chicago. He has never experienced physical love, and would like a companion to satisfy that need. He seeks out Dr. Euphronius, a scientist who is studying reanimation. After telling her about his situation, they go graverobbing, and bring Ida’s corpse back to life. Bale’s creature, referred to as Frank (isn’t that cute?) travels the country with Ida, going on a murder spree. They build up a cult following, much like the fans of Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis’s Mickey and Mallory in Natural Born Killers. Two detectives are on their trail.

My two favorite performances come from those playing supporting characters. I know makeup and costumes can go a long way, but Penélope Cruz doesn’t seem to age, and looks as great as ever. Her acting shows a side of her we don’t always see, as the wonderfully named Myrna Malloy, who travels around with Detective Wiles as his assistant. In a movie that tries so hard to be about girl power when it comes to the title character, it’s Cruz who gets my favorite mic drop comeuppance moment at the end.

The other highlight is Jake Gyllenhaal as a Fred Astaire type song-and-dance movie star. It’s really Gyllenhall doing the singing and dancing; he underwent six weeks of training. Peter Sarsgaard as Det. Wiles is quite good, and so is Annette Bening as Dr. Euphronious. I love Bale and Buckley very much, but the former can’t help but be overshadowed by Jacob Elordi’s recent non-traditional and refreshing take on the same role – while the latter parades on the shallow, showy histrionics from the overactor’s bag of tricks. I thought of Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love. Anyone can rant, rave, dance around, switch accents for no reason, get bloody and dirty, etc – and this is exactly what they do.

The ending, I suppose, is satisfying enough, and suggests the story can continue indefinitely. I was never that on board with our main characters, and was more interested in the journeys of the supporting players – but even then, not much so. The scars, stitches, and seeping fluids from wounds are off-putting, even for a creature feature. The Bride! is a Frankenstein job of awesome cinematography and a couple of fun needle-drops amidst a whole lot of confusing, irritating, artsy-fartsy fluff.

Grade: C