Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
The Bride!
In The Bride!, Academy Award-nominated Director Maggie Gyllenhaal takes on multiple socially accepted, yet untrue norms attrributed to women by our deeply dysfunctional patriarchal society, turning them into fodder for a totally enjoyable grist mill of delight.
Yes, that's using a whole lotta Sociology 101 words to say The Bride! is a no-holds barred film about women empowering women, because many men won't accept that women can do anything they can do, and do it better. This includes bringing the dead back to life and taking down a mob boss who had women killed and their tongues removed for 'talking too much.'
Gyllenhaal has reimagined 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley's classic novel, into an original work that dishes up a filmic fusion of Bonnie & Clyde and Young Frankenstein, and tosses in what I'm going to call a 'Thriller' interlude that stars her brother, Jake Gyllenhaal. I'm also quite sure that Ms. Gyllenhaal and costume designer Sandy Powell drew many of their wardrobe ideas from MTV's Queen of the 80's Madonna and her iconic fashion flair. Wardrobe-wise, we get a visual mélange of thrift shop/punk/vintage lace, fingerless gloves and ripped fishnets.
And then we have the lead casting. Straight off her brilliant performance in Hamnet, Jessie Buckley is The Bride, a designation she comes to embrace after she, eventually, falls for Christian Bale's 'Frank'. Frank(enstein) sees himself as a monster, hiding his features behind a scarf. He's arrived in 1930's Chicago, to ask the doctor he's been corresponding with to create a companion for him. He's been following the detailed experiments posted in journals by the Doctor that speak of 'reinvigorating' things that are, frankly, dead. Importantly to Frank, in The Bride!, we're not 'reanimating'; we're 'reinvigorating' things.
However, Frank assumed that the ground-breaking Doctor he was corresponding with, played by five-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening. was a man. The fact that he's totally confused by this amuses Dr. Cornelia Euphronius. Her husband's name was on the studies, she received little if any credit from the scientific community. She's challenged scientifically by, and identifies emotionally, with 'Frank's' tale of eternal loneliness. She too has lost someone close to her, and agrees, with the aid of her assistant, Greta, to help Frank. Her assistant is played by the marvelous Jeannie Berlin, whose deadpan scenes will leave you laughing. And the graverobbing and reinvigoration begins.
Following her reinvigoration and some brutal murders, Ida and Frank go on the lam. This is when Penelope Cruz enters the story, alongside Peter Sarsgaard. They're a pair of detectives trying to track down The Bride, who they believe is an accessory to the murders. The Bride has been given the name 'Ida', as in 'Ida-know' by Frank and the Doctor. If you miss the obvious nod to 'Abbie Normal' from Young Frankenstein, you can thank me in advance for helping you out. Oh yes, we also get a new version of 'Putting on the Ritz' in The Bride!. I'm sure Mr. Brooks is quite pleased.
Cruz's character, Myrna Malloy, is the brains of the duo, and though Sarsgaard is her superior, he defers to her. He distracts bumbling cops, some of whom are in the pocket of the mob boss, allowing his partner to use her wits and brains to track their prey. The cops are always speaking directly to the male, ignoring Malloy, which, though it amuses her on the surface, really pisses her off underneath. Malloy and the Doctor are women cut from the same cloth. Experts in their fields, but forced by society to play second fiddle to men.
And that brings us back to author Mary Shelley. Due to her being 20 years old and a women when 'Frankenstein' was published in 1818, she could not attach her name as the author of the groundbreaking work, so it was published anonymously. Many believed at the time that her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was the author. He had, in fact, written the preface to the novel. Ms. Shelley remained uncredited for her own work until 1823.
This is obviously the nugget from where Gyllenhaal penned her script. As The Bride! opens, we see a distraught and irate Mary speaking about her novel: 'Is it a ghost, a horror or a love story?' and to 'be warned... something is cracking'. In fact, a very dead Ms. Shelley is seeking a live vessel in which to insert her anger. She finds it in Ida, right before 'Ida' is killed the first time. Reinvigorating herself from beyond the grave, Shelley enters the crack in Ida's brain that's been opened by Doctor E. Once that crack is opened, as they say, the 'game is afoot'. Ida/Mary will not be silenced a second time, bound and determined to wreak havoc on the patriarchy. The Bride! is an infectious film of women's empowerment. 'Twisted Sisters Rage Against The Machine' indeed.
