The Bride! review: Maggie Gyllenhaal's riff on the Bride of Frankenstein is 'exhilarating' ★★★★☆

A ferocious Jessie Buckley and a heartbreaking Christian Bale star in a bold film of "huge scope and ambition" that is "loaded with surprises".

If you were a powerless woman in 1936 Chicago killed by the mob then reanimated to serve as the wife of Frankenstein's creature, you'd be a little angry, too. Jessie Buckley certainly is in Maggie Gyllenhaal's riff on the 1935 classic Bride of Frankenstein.

The Bride! gives the title character, who doesn't speak a word in the original film, a voice and mind of her own. But it is also loaded with surprises that its premise doesn't hint at. Gyllenhaal – who first brilliantly directed The Lost Daughter – nods to Young Frankenstein, Bonnie and Clyde, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. There are serious threats of sexual violence, along with playful song-and-dance numbers, a detective and a His Girl Friday. Oh, and Mary Shelley appears. At times it's as if the film itself was stitched together from the parts of other movies, but collecting all those bits and pieces is a sign of Gyllenhaal's huge scope and ambition. 

Here the creature is called Frank, and the film is almost as much about him as it is about the Bride. He isn't lumbering, but he does have staples across his forehead and a misshapen nose. Once more, Christian Bale proves he is one of the best actors we have. With a gravelly voice, Frank shows up at the lab of Dr Euphronious (Annette Bening) and tells her how unbearably lonely he has been for more than a century. Bale makes him both heartbreaking and capable of angry violence.

Frank also loves films, and in several scenes that are great fun, he watches his favourite star, Ronnie Reed, singing and dancing across what that era called the silver screen. Jake Gyllenhaal perfectly embodies the suave, Astaire-like dancer, and at times Frank imagines himself in that role, complete with top hat and tails.

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When Euphronious jump-starts the corpse, the electrified Bride comes to life with her platinum hair on end, an echo of Elsa Lanchester's in the original film. A reanimating chemical has left black stains on her face and she doesn't remember her name. Buckley gives a ferocious performance, but it takes a while to believe in the Bride's character, not because she doesn't know herself but because Gyllenhaal's stylistic shifts keep us at a distance. For much of the film the Bride is more an idea of female empowerment than a person, and the presence of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, doesn't help.

Shelley, also played by Buckley, opens the film, her scenes in black and white. (Other than the Hollywood musicals Frank watches, the rest of this spectacular-looking film is in colour with a shadowy noir feel.) She speaks in an ominous tone and decides to inhabit the body of brash American mob moll names Ida, before Ida is reborn as the Bride. From then on, in an unsettling turn, Shelley sporadically speaks through her in the author's voice and British accent, instead of Ida's own. The Bride also frequently says, "I would prefer not to," quoting Herman Melville's character Bartleby, as the film spells out. The reference makes sense coming from Gyllenhaal but it's headspinning to hear from tough-talking Ida.  

Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal

Release date: 6 March

But there is a turning point, and the film soars excitingly toward the end from there. In a buoyant scene in an underground club, the Bride dances wildly while Frank watches calmly from a table. When two men attack her outside the club, his violence explodes, and they have to go on the run. Peter Sarsgaard has a functional role as the detective following them, and Penelope Cruz sharply plays his secretary, whose ace detecting skills are better than her boss's. The Bride also falls in love with Frank, kind and protective as he is. That he saves her from violence twice, as she rescues him from loneliness, adds a layer of equality to the film's feminist message.

The film is gigantic in scale, as they arrive in the bright neon of New York City's Times Square and later engage in a ballroom shoot-out with the police. And throughout, even when The Bride! is short on emotion, its bold vision is exhilarating. 

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