My first review back and I get to write about the perfect Universal Monster reimagining as The Bride of Frankenstein finally gets a movie where she can shine!
While past reimaginings like The Invisible Man and The Shape of Water are still fantastic, arguably their original counterparts showcased their monsters to the fullest (especially Claude Rains’ iconic Invisible Man). While the original Bride of Frankenstein is iconic in its own right, the titular Bride herself notoriously only appears on screen for about 5 minutes with no dialogue. Director Maggie Gyllenhaal clearly sought to change that, and deliver a movie that makes the Bride more than an icon, but a fully fleshed-out character. In Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, she succeeds, delivering a bombastic, wild movie where the titular Bride earns her own name, and her own voice.
Set in the 1930s and styled as a romance between Frankenstein (Christian Bale) and The Bride (Jessie Buckley), The Bride! is an interesting beast as it’s more than a retelling of The Bride of Frankenstein, it’s framed as a new story by Mary Shelley herself. Jessie Buckley weaves a dual role as both The Bride and Mary Shelley, and while the original film does have Mary Shelley telling the story, The Bride! Actually has Shelley interacting with her creation, lamenting that The Bride needs to discover who she is and define herself. The framing device helps justify the over-the-type wild world the film inhabits, as we see much like Shelley herself in her writing, Gyllenhaal loves wearing her artistic influences on her sleeve. The film is littered with movie references, from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical numbers to Bonnie and Clyde gangster devilry, some Hawksian women, all of which inform how film and art in general informed The Bride and Frankenstein as characters, Shelley as a writer, and Gyllenhaal as a filmmaker.
Mixed amongst the barrage of cinematic influences is a legitimately thrilling and touching romance between The Bride and Frankenstein. Buckley and Bale both deliver strong performances, and their romance exemplifies how being with each other helps them grow into more self-realized people. The newly-revived from murder Bride who’s suffering from memory loss, while understandably mistrusting of Frankenstein, develops her sense of self as she’s cheered on by her embroidered partner. Simultaneously, Frankenstein, a lonely, awkward movie buff who’s more in love with the idea of a partner than anything, still never treats The Bride possessively. The more they’re together, and the more they support each other, the more they see each other and themselves as fully realized.
While the film is at its strongest when it leans into our romantic monsters, the B-plot featuring Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz as a His Girl Friday pair of detectives trying to catch The Bride and Frankenstein isn’t nearly as interesting. While not necessarily bad, the subplot is very standard, contrasting heavily with the inventive passion of our two leads. It is fun seeing Cruz as a Hawksian woman, but the overarching narrative of her gaining recognition from the other cops and earning her badge feels stale. The subplot could’ve been cut out, or have Sarsgaard’s character conflated with a few other side characters, and it would’ve drastically improved the film’s pacing.
What makes The Bride! a truly fun sit is Gyllenhaal’s confidence on full display. She had the confidence to call Frankenstein by name rather than “Frankenstein’s monster”, disregarding the common fanboy nitpick specifically because her Frankenstein doesn’t see himself as a monster, rather as the son of Victor Frankenstein, with his own faults and desires as a man. She had the confidence to mesh horror, punk, and 30s musicals, in a way that informs her characters rather than as pandering aesthetics. The Bride! Is an assured vision, successfully building on The Bride’s status as an iconic movie monster.
