At its core, Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! has a wealth of imagination. The director draws inspiration from James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, but she makes some tweaks to filter the story through a female gaze. The Bride here, played by Jessie Buckley, is not saved for a climactic appearance. She appears early in the film and asks questions about herself. What's her real name? Who was she before the accident? This "accident" involves her, as a human, falling down the stairs to her death—a sequence filmed with such razzmatazz that it justifies the presence of the exclamation mark in the title.
In Bride of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley appears at the beginning of the film to reveal that she has more of the story to tell. In The Bride!, Shelley (Buckley) says she had a story to tell after Frankenstein, which she couldn't complete due to her death, after which she possesses Ida (this was the Bride's name when she was human) and becomes the author of this text. Gyllenhaal essentially invokes Shelley directly in the narrative, making The Bride! feel like a sort of novel written by the English novelist herself. On top of this, Gyllenhaal imposes her own directorial vision, making The Bride! a story of women, by women.
By conceiving a Bride who has no memories of her past and who is fed lies by her so-called husband, Frank (Christian Bale), in the present, Gyllenhaal makes interesting implications about psychological manipulation that are rooted in the world of patriarchal oppression. The men in The Bride! openly undermine the authority of women. James (Matthew Maher), an associate of a mob boss named Lupino (Zlatko Burić), almost forces Ida to obey him during the opening moments. Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz), a detective, has to literally raise her voice to make herself heard in front of other policemen. Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) refers to Myrna as his secretary to "blend in" with his male colleagues. He respects Myrna professionally, but he isn't someone who calls out people of his gender for being sexist. The men in The Bride! are either downright disgusting (like James and Lupino) or gently enable the existing stereotype. If a Jake doesn't acknowledge his female co-worker's professional status in public, then a Frank reanimates a female body into existence only because of his desire to experience carnal bliss. Both types of men—James/Lupino and Jake/Frank—essentially see women as having limited roles in their lives.
The Bride!, then, is a movie where these oppressed women revolt against the oppressors, the bullies. In a world where they are silenced, abused, or killed, they get together and cut off the tongue of a violent criminal. A Myrna eventually claims authority; a Bride eventually claims her name and her agency. With the manic energy of a Harley Quinn, a dense vocabulary, and a black mark that makes her face look as if she's always giving a half-smile, Buckley, as the Bride, shreds the screen with her gestures and her voice. She's so loud she almost swallows everyone else. No one manages to stand toe-to-toe with her. Poor Bale is simply blown off the screen by her presence. He's the last person you remember as you head towards the exit.
But Buckley's loudness isn't equal to powerful or memorable acting. She does the job of that exclamation mark in the title, and if she stays in your head, that's because she forces herself into your memory. By contrast, Annette Bening and Jeannie Berlin evoke chuckles from the audience with quirks that are discharged casually and lightly. The reveal of a black mark on the face of Berlin's Greta is possibly the funniest shot in the movie.
Frank requests Bening's Dr. Cornelia Euphronious to create a companion for him so that he can get the pleasure of sex in his dull life, but when Frank ends up having sex with the Bride, we don't get to hear what he thought of the whole thing. How was the experience? Did his expectations meet reality satisfyingly? Gyllenhaal's depiction of sex is rather bland and unexciting, which ends up being a major flaw here, given that the whole story initially comes to life with Frank's sexual curiosity.
Frank, we come to know, is a huge fan of a movie star named Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). When he encounters him at a party, he goes up to him, talks to him, expresses his admiration, and is met with the actor's indifference. It's the kind of cliché you thought the movies had been slowly getting rid of, but Gyllenhaal tightly holds on to such follies. She stages sexual assaults on the Bride in two scenes (one after a party and the other when the couple is questioned by a police officer while they are driving) so that she can offer a release through Frank's brutality (I understand the intention, but the filmmaking feels exploitative). It's the type of cheap shortcut you find in movies by hacks—the directors who deliberately push certain buttons because they don't have a good, engaging story.
Hence, it's quite disappointing to find such tropes in Gyllenhaal's film. She is a talented filmmaker, but she hasn't yet found a way to extend her imagination beyond the mere boundaries of the premise (this is what prevented The Lost Daughter from being an exceptional film). Perhaps this is why Gyllenhaal recycles all those stupid clichés in the movie.
Amidst all the frustrating choices, you get a peek into the mind of a filmmaker who has a distinct voice, like during a sequence where all the characters dance like zombies. It's thrillingly shot—the dance floor looks like a carnival of grotesque bodies. Gyllenhaal, though, isn't able to sustain a thrilling, suspenseful, comical mood. She also has little to say in a 126-minute-long film, and whatever she says sounds conventional, trite, ordinary. As a result, The Bride! starts testing your patience eventually.
You can pass your time wondering whether a detective is named Jake because, well, Chinatown, or if a man is named Clyde because he's another movie reference, given that the Bride and Frank—committing murders and moving from one place to another—look like Bonnie and Clyde. But nothing hides the fact that The Bride!, after an hour or so, becomes boring.
The movie runs out of juice and hits the same notes stridently. Every thought and idea is driven out of your head. You wait for something, anything, a miracle, maybe. Gyllenhaal, alas, leaves you with little substance and florid style. She loves her monsters; she gives them a happy ending. What she doesn't do is develop them beyond the basics.
Frank wants a companion; the Bride wants to be free. How do they process their lives? After pushing a policeman off the train and killing him, how does the Bride process the shock? Does she talk to Frank about her feelings? What do the couple think of the revolution they start unintentionally? Does the Bride enjoy Ronnie Reed's movies?
In place of details that could have made the characters alive and rich, Gyllenhaal takes you from one banal plot point to another banal plot point. No wonder the movie starts to stink. In the hands of Gyllenhaal, the vision of women's empowerment feels vapid. The Bride! screams, but it never stings.
Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times