There are moments in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” that feel like they’re trying to get at something revelatory about the female condition. For the most part, unfortunately, the film is much like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster – haphazardly stitched together.
“The Bride!,” which is inspired by the 1935 film “Bride of Frankenstein” and, by extension, Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein,” feels a bit like 2019’s “Joker” – but this time, for girls! Not only does the world Gyllenhaal has built feel like Gotham, but the film also makes similar thematic choices and mistakes – namely, throwing a bunch of ideas at the wall without sticking any of them.
“The Bride!” begins with Shelley herself (Jessie Buckley) – dead, bathed in black and white and shrouded in shadow, telling the audience she has another story yet inside of her. And this time, it’s a love story. Shelley’s spirit then shoots over to 1930s Chicago and possesses the body of Ida (also played by Buckley), a gangster’s mol type who quickly dies by way of tumbling down a staircase. Meanwhile, Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) – or Frank, as he calls himself – has found a new mad scientist in Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) and wants her to help him create a companion.
Inevitably, Frank chooses Ida, and when she wakes up, crafts a lie that the two of them are engaged to be married, but were in a terrible accident together, accounting for the fact that Ida doesn’t remember Frank at all. This is not the worst thing that a man will do to Ida in “The Bride!,” a movie filled with understandable and righteous anger over the many ways in which men harm women. But, that rage is tempered by the film’s inability to find a clear point of view and its superhero-esque treatment of violence.
On its surface, the “Joker for girls” quip might feel limiting and unfair. But “The Bride!” makes the comparison impossible to ignore – this is a movie where a woman who is wronged kills someone, which then inspires numerous women to dress up like her and run through the streets wreaking havoc. Sound familiar?
The biggest difference is the revenge fantasy that plays out in “The Bride!” is tempered by the film’s end, so much so that Euphronius has a direct quote about how revenge is a dead end (subtle, “The Bride!” is not – at one point, Ida screams the words “Me too” over and over again).
But, in that regard, Gyllenhaal wants to have her cake and eat it too. “The Bride!” wants to be a movie about the ways in which men hurt women, big and small, but Ida forgives Frank for lying to her about where she came from within five minutes of finding out about the lie. “The Bride!” wants to be a movie about the hollowness of revenge, but not long after Ida rages about how empty she feels, a crew of women emulating her style gleefully wreak their revenge on an evil mob boss. For her part, Buckley goes balls to the wall. But she has so much to do as she switches back and forth between Ida and Shelley that it becomes more of a showcase for her dexterity rather than a heavily emotional performance.
“The Bride!” is not a full musical, but it might have been better if it was. The musical sequences are the one aspect of this film that feel genuinely expressive. Most everyone in “The Bride!” is able to confidently assert what they’re feeling at all times – even the Bride herself, who can’t remember her own name. That mode of verbal expression within a film that aims to be visually mesmerizing is limiting. Musical sequences necessitate expression by other means.
There is also a rather interesting narrative device where Frank and the Bride keep showing up in movies within the film itself, taking the place of other actors. The comparison of crime to entertainment is not necessarily a new one, but literally putting the characters in a prominent form of entertainment of the day is an interesting way to showcase that idea.
The most affecting choice that Gyllenhaal makes in the entire film is that almost every act of sexual violence begins as a consensual moment – a choice that highlights an experience so many women have with assault. But, as soon as things take a dark turn, the men in question become grotesquely evil, and very often don’t fit the space they’re in. The first time the Bride is almost raped, it happens as she’s leaving an underground, highly queer-coded nightclub. Maybe it’s me, but the club in question doesn’t really feel like a place where rapists would be hanging out. On the other hand, Det. Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) – the ostensible example of how “nice guys” can be bad too – comes to the conclusion that he is actually a bad guy all on his own and immediately hands his job over to a woman. Each end of the spectrum feels cheap.
Unfortunately, every interesting visual, every brave choice that pops up in “The Bride!” is inevitably left to the wayside. What is most frustrating about the film is how a movie that purports to take violence against women seriously – and clearly has a lot of anger towards that violence – limits its characters to existing in a world flattened to two-dimensionality.