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........

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