Film Review: The Bride!
Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale have electric screen chemistry in a truly original take on a classic monster story. Writer‑director Maggie Gyllenhaal updates Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in The Bride!, a hypersexual gothic romance filled with dazzling fantasy sequences, feminist empowerment themes, and striking production design. The film’s salacious elements and magnetic leads are undeniably eye‑catching, even as the narrative swings unevenly. Plot holes and significant pacing issues undermine a film that looks extraordinary but never fully reaches its lofty artistic ambitions.
Buckley pulls triple duty in another stunning performance. She opens the film in stark black and white as a bitter Mary Shelley waiting in purgatory for a new human vessel to inhabit. We then cut to 1936 Chicago, where the boisterous Ida (Buckley) keeps a table of chuckling gangsters entertained with her antics. But something changes Ida's countenance as an English accent emerges with damning accusations against the club's villainous crime boss owner (Zlatko Burić). He doesn't take kindly to being shamed, and his goons tear Ida away from the uneasy crowd.
Meanwhile, at the nearby Institute, a hideously deformed and stitched-together man asks to meet the infamous "mad scientist" Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening). Frank (Christian Bale) has lived for over a century in abject loneliness. He aches to experience carnal pleasures and the joy of female companionship. Euphronious, at first, bristles at the request. She's no madame at a brothel, but observes Frank's genuine pain and longing. A trip to the cemetery provides a perfect specimen who Frank feels may be too beautiful for the likes of him. Euphronious ignores this objection as her laboratory crackles with lightning and a mysterious black fluid pumps into the carcass. The Bride (Buckley) awakens violently with no memory as a besotted Frank falls instantly under her bewitching spell.
Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter) scratches every creative itch in her second feature as a filmmaker. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's first start with the audacious visuals. The Bride! sets bright colors against grainy stock in the primary setting of 30s gangland America. Dark Fedoras, wool suits, and red dresses are juxtaposed against Buckley's shocking white hair, bleached skin, and distinctive black lipstick with a sensual smudge. Bale, nearly emaciated and covered in grotesque prosthetics reflective of Frankenstein's expected look, has a perpetually broken nose that serves as a physical counterpoint to Buckley's smoldering intensity. They're clearly freaks amongst the masses and attract gawkers as such.
Frank loves watching musicals and is especially fond of the Hollywood star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), who twirls and dances in a tuxedo à la Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. These scenes are also black and white with a square aspect ratio, bright lighting, and elaborate dance numbers. Frank then imagines he's on-screen with the Bride as his Ginger Rogers, but much less refined and elegant. The second act takes their cavorting into the real world with raucous set pieces choreographed in their edgy style. Buckley and Bale shake a frenetic leg as inhibitions are shed with lust and murder in the glittering aftermath.
Gyllenhaal frames the Bride as fiercely independent with a burning hatred of men who assault and subjugate women. Frank becomes her dashing hero and protector without expectations. She recognizes that he's innately kind and gentle, but can be unstoppable once unleashed. They fall madly in love as her split personality propels them deeper into trouble. They transform into Bonnie and Clyde with a legion of adoring fans emulating their rebellion against cruel misogyny. Spurring a Me Too movement of copycat followers that mirrors the scandals and predators that preyed on the vulnerable. Gyllenhaal pulls no punches in illustrating the carnage of comeuppance. This may be a heavy-handed approach to some viewers, but there's purposely zero subtlety here.
The Bride! falls off the rails with poorly developed secondary characters, forced exposition, and the use of coincidence to bind key parts together. Peter Sarsgaard, Gyllenhaal's real-life husband, and Penélope Cruz co-star as detectives hot on their trail. They pop up like Whac-A-Mole with their own chauvinistic problems and dialogue that continually provides the audience with details that should have been inferred. This is all very unnatural and seems like Gyllenhaal's crutch to glue disparate pieces together. It's also strange that Bening and John Magaro, who plays a mob stooge also hunting the couple, vanish for huge swaths of the film and then appear out of nowhere. Gyllenhaal has a lot to say and do, but gets clunky in the edit bay when connecting the dots. She allows the spectacle to run amok when a tighter script, more fluid cuts, and less panache would have benefited the film.
That said, no one leaves The Bride! bored or confused. It's a cinematic roller-coaster ride fueled by a mesmerizing Buckley and Bale. They're magnetic together with an infectious likability that overcomes the film's flaws.
The Bride! is a production of First Love Films and In the Current Company. It will be released theatrically on March 6th from Warner Bros.