“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.
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