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DIRECTED BY: Maggie Gyllenhaal

FEATURING: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal

PLOT: In the 1930s, a gangster’s moll is killed after Mary Shelley’s spirit possesses her and insults important men; soon after, Frankenstein’s monster convinces a mad scientist to animate her dead body as a mate for him, and the outcast pair go on a righteous killing spree.

COMMENTS: Just like James Whale‘s Bride of Frankenstein, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! begins with a prologue in which author Mary Shelley describes her unwritten sequel to “Frankenstein.” Only this Mary is foul-mouthed, angry, and very dead. Despite this handicap, Mary is so determined to birth her untold story that she enters the body of 1930s Chicago party girl Ida as she dines on champagne and oysters in the company of gangsters, overriding the girl’s compliant meekness to speak through her, resulting in Ida being thrown down the stairs to her death. When Frankenstein’s monster (who’s quickly given the nickname “Frank”) comes to town to ask Dr. Euphronious to create a life partner for him, this is the corpse the pair dig up and reanimate. From that point on, Bride Jesse Buckley, amnesiac about her past life, will occasionally be possessed by Shelley’s spirit, surrendering her streetwise Chicago accent and suddenly speaking like a pissed-off Victorian Dorothy Parker on a three-day bender.

The ghost of Mary Shelley (who, recall, was not only a novelist but also the daughter of an anarchist philosopher and a feminist pioneer) quite literally haunts The Bride! Her presence is about one-third literal possession, one-third meta-narrative conceit, and one-third symbolic feminist consciousness, with a touch of comic relief. It’s a strange and bold gambit that sets the unevenly absurdist tone of this oddball Gothic romance, and it provides recent Oscar-honoree Jesse Buckley the chance to reaffirm the fact that she’s the most versatile and accomplished actress working today. Her performance is necessarily schizophrenic, with the script frequently requiring her to switch accents in the middle of a line. Buckley understands the assignment, throwing herself into the role with risk-taking abandon, especially considering that she’s coming off a prestige performance as William Shakespeare’s grieving wife. Here, she embraces the campiness of the material, and her quick turnaround shows a willingness to accept absolutely any challenge and adapt herself to the requirements of the script. Without her in the lead, The Bride! might well have fallen flat on its face, rather than being a divisive work with defenders and detractors on both sides of the aisle. Let’s hope that, having gotten that Oscar under her belt at an early stage in her career, Buckley remains eager to take on these kinds of outré roles.

The rest of the cast largely plays straight man to Buckley’s crazy. Bale is a fine Monster, digging into the traditional loneliness and dignity of the character, playing him in a realistic register and always willing to yield the spotlight to his co-star. Annette Bening’s mad scientist is eccentric enough, but again does not overshadow the Bride. Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard also play it straight as a pair of detectives on the monster couple’s trail, advancing the film’s secondary feminist subplot along more familiar lines. Gyllenhaal’s famous brother Jake delights in a small supporting role as a Gene Kelly type hoofer who dances in the fictional films beloved by Hollywood musical fanatic Frank.

Bride!‘s weirdo energy doesn’t stop with its wackadoo Mary-Shelley-possesses-a-moll premise or its Frankenstein-in-30s-America setting. Maggie Gyllenhaal directs The Bride! like the wannabe cult-film it seems destined to become, scene-by-scene and with little concern for superficial coherence. Sometimes characters are understandably horrified by Frank and his Bride’s gruesome appearances, while at other times these monsters who walk among us are treated as unremarkable. (Despite her cadaverous appearance and disheveled makeup, Buckley finds herself a target of numerous lechers.) At times characters appear onscreen in the various black and white features cinephile Frank insists on catching at every stop. The couple manages to stumble into the only 80s punk-scene venue in 1930s Chicago for a night on the town. An incongruous dance scene in he middle of a black tie gala in which the mischievous Shelley appears to possess the entire entourage serves as a centerpiece.

There’s enough crazy to go around, and along the way, there are as many references to Young Frankenstein and Bonnie & Clyde as there are to Bride of Frankenstein—and for reasons that barely fit, the film’s message is structured around an angry variant of Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” philosophy. There is a “normal” story here, but Gyllenhaal eschews it in favor of a directorial philosophy fashioned around, as she has her Mary Shelley put it, being “disobedient and ungovernable.” It’s exactly the out-there directorial effort we would hope for from an actress whom we first noticed in Donnie Darko, and whose best-known acting credit is as a submissive in the BDSM comedy Secretary. Unfortunately, The Bride‘s box office performance suggests that Gyllenhaal may have already squandered her shot at being Hollywood’s next go-to female director, but we’re hoping she will continue to deliver the gonzo goods rather than reforming her “disobedient geometries” by chasing the almighty buck.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a pulpy, punk-rock romantic tragedy that’s chaotic, weird and beautiful, but also confusing and confounding.”–The Cleveland Plain Dealer (contemporaneous)