“What if Mary Shelley had Tourette’s and was reincarnated in the body of an undead prostitute with homicidal tendencies?”
This is the question “The Bride!” seeks to answer. Written and directed and produced by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the film is a “Bride of Frankenstein” story revamped to suit millennial feminist sensibilities.
“The Bride!” opens on Mary Shelley, played by Jessie Buckley, trapped in a chiaroscuro-lit purgatory.
“Knock, knock,” says the woman.
“Who’s there?” asks the same woman.
“It’s me, Mary Shelley, author of ‘Frankenstein.’”
The movie plods along with the same measure of subtlety. It’s 1936. Ida, the aforementioned prostitute, spends her evenings in the company of raucous and cartoonishly misogynistic gangsters. But nearly every man in Gyllenhaal’s film is cartoonishly misogynistic, with the occasional exception of Frankenstein’s monster, aka “Frank,” aka Christian Bale, who is guilty of a more measured misogyny.
Shelley possesses Ida’s body. Shelley-possessed Ida begins spouting obscenities in a British accent, which she will do the entire movie. Ida’s native accent approaches a high school student doing an impression of an old-timey oil tycoon: “Nyah, see! See, toots!”
A man pushes Ida down some stairs and she dies. A moment of recognition for the sound department — the “every bone in Ida’s neck” snapping sound was well done.
Frank arrives in Chicago and petitions a mad scientist, Dr. Euphronius, to make him a bride. Frank does the “the surgeon is the boy’s mother“ bit with Dr. *Cornelia* Euphronius, which tells you something about the particular strain of snarky mid-2010s feminism this movie offers. There are echoes of this bit later in the film, when we’re introduced to an incompetent and corrupt male detective (Peter Sarsgaard) who takes credit for his genius secretary’s (Penélope Cruz) ideas.
Anyhow, Dr. Euphronius eventually relents, she and Frank dig up Ida’s corpse, and the titular Bride is born.
Frank and the Bride go dancing at a club. Two men try to rape her. Frank and the Bride leave the club. Two men try to rape her. Frank kills them. Later, a cop pulls over Frank and the Bride for speeding, then tries to rape her.
You get the idea. “The Bride!” takes place in a world where most men are rape-happy monsters, their violent urges quelled only by death. The less rapey men take advantage of women in other ways. Detective Jake Wiles takes advantage of his station to sleep with a downtrodden informant, and exploits his secretary’s brilliance. He repents for these sins by retiring and promoting his secretary to his former station.
Frank is punished for his misogyny — bringing Ida back to life to serve as his companion and lying to her about the circumstances of their coupling — when the Bride finds out what he’s done and rejects his marriage proposal.
Below the paywall, you’ll get:
The best part of this terrible movie.
The worst part of this terrible movie.
Should I do an artificial intelligence seance with Mary Shelley?
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