Trends in cinema are often not due to artists copying each other’s ideas but to pure chance. Just a few months after the release of Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’, Maggie Gyllenhaal releases ‘The Bride!’, inspired by James Whale’s 1935 film ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’. However, the version delivered by the American director is very free and revisionist, deciding to put the focus from the beginning on her heroine, played by an unleashed Jessie Buckley. Her character is presented as a politically incorrect, deranged and misunderstood woman, trapped in a world of men who use her as they please.
In the original film, Mary Shelley’s creature goes to Doctor Praetorius to ask for a companion who will make him feel less alone in a world so hostile to someone like him. In Gyllenhaal’s update, the scientist is a female scientist, Doctor Euphronius, played by a likable Annette Benning. Here it is the women who have the greatest weight in the plot, leaving even Mary Shelley’s famous creature in the background.
The director also adds the subplot of a brilliant detective who is on the trail of the monstrous couple, played by a hilarious Penélope Cruz, who does not receive the respect she deserves within her guild, since it is her male colleagues who take all the credit. These understandable and important feminist demands are sometimes overly emphasized, but in any case, subtlety is not in the nature of the film. Gyllenhaal is not looking for it at any time, but rather wants those exclamation points that appear in the title to be clearly noted.
So, ‘The Bride!’ It is a Molotov cocktail of references and genres that is enjoyed precisely for its own recklessness. There are many narrative and visual ideas that work, others that don’t work so much, but the ambition and desire to do something different is always appreciated, something quite refreshing in today’s commercial cinema. In her impetus to carry out each of the filmmaker’s ideas, from turning her film into a tribute to Ginger Rogers’ musicals, to a film noir, to a monster film, to a sort of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, lies the film’s biggest flaw. Luckily, the whole thing ends up being more charming than irritating. Above all, because at all times there is a very agile narrative rhythm that makes it difficult to ignore the adventures of the protagonists.
Much of the credit goes to an excellent and all-rounder Jessie Buckley, who is constantly at a very high level of intensity without ever falling into overacting, and a memorable Christian Bale, who brings the necessary tenderness and aggressiveness to his Frankenstein. It is evident watching it that both the filmmaker and her actors have had a great time creating this chaotic and unbridled universe, and that joy is contagious. Despite wanting to be everything at once and be everywhere, ‘The Bride!’ It is a film with its own personality and entertainment that is as fleeting as it is, without a doubt, effective.
