A refreshingly feminist interpretation of a character who was never quite received the onscreen attention and treatment such a complex and fascinating creation deserves, The Bride is armed with an arsenal of talent ready to give Mary Shelley's ancillary creation her time in the light. Maggie Gyllnehaal takes a bold swing with her sophomore directorial feature, casting Best Actress-to-be Jessie Buckley as the titular "monster", alongside a supporting ensemble featuring Christian Bale (as Frankenstein), Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Decades of loneliness leads Frankenstein to the office of a doctor in 1930s Chicago who is able to reanimate the dead, providing him with a "Bride" - a woman possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley. Together, the pair intend to divulge in debauchery. but murder, corruption and chaos instead ensue. Riddled with a zany, punk energy seeking to reinvigorate a well-worn story - so well-worn, in fact, that The Bride arrives as page-to-screen-stablemate Frankenstein competes at the upcoming Academy Awards with nine nominations to its name - can this new interpretation provide something new Frankenstein fans are yet to see?
For such an eloquent creative, who speaks with such intent and aspiration, Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride is a jumbled and fumbled exercise that misses her ambitious mark. Clearly intending to make sweeping statements about personal autonomy, female rage, misuse of power and systemic corruption with her screenplay, while simultaneously operating as a ghostly possession story, a Bonnie and Clyde-esque road trip movie, and political rebellion call, Gyllenhaal has overpacked with an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. While there are flourishes of genuine promise in the singular elements of the film, the film fails to mesh as one cohesive whole, every thread underserved and distracting from the overall picture. Without the depth needed for these pieces to be developed to the best of their ability, and the lesser elements taking up the oxygen elsewhere, the central relationship between the Bride and Frankenstein feels shockingly unexplored.
Gyllenhaal then piles on a number of genre moments, from the more understandable (horror and science-fiction) to the less substantiated (musical), for good measure. Her everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach is bold, and almost all of these moments individually contain the hallmark of a creative with refreshing cinematic tendencies that would work if they were the focus - but the screenplay does not have the scope to explore any of these ideas with the depth they require, and instead starve the film of the oxygen needed for its central character and her all-important relationship to Frankenstein to thrive.
Jessie Buckley approaches The Bride with uncompromising ferocity, playing such haywire renderings of various facets of the character with a let-it-all-burn energy. Does it all work? Not at all. It's studied to a fault, lacking an unpredictability that would make the character far more jolting. And yet there's a clear magnetism to the work she is doing her, a sharp and pointedly theatrical portrayal intended to display her versatility as an actress. It's almost entirely the opposite of her Oscar-winning work in Hamnet, and while this is far from her strongest work overall, it does provide a really exciting playground for her to flex her skill. Christian Bale rather understandably relinquishes the spotlight to Buckley, but delivers a solid performance himself, acknowledging that his work is supporting, rather than leading.
There is an inescapable sense with The Bride, as of yet unproven but suspiciously evident, that studio interference has meddled with the intended vision for this film. Perhaps it could be said that the writing was on the wall for The Bride when news of negative test screenings leaked last year, leading to delays and pushbacks. It wouldn't be surprising for the film to have been chopped and changed in an attempt to transform the picture into something the studio considered more palatable by general audiences, an ironically frankensteinian approach that has left the director's project chopped to pieces in the name of saving skin. If only someone had written a book warning of the perils of doing so.