US Edition‘The Bride!’ Review: Buckley Gives Another Monster Performance in Wild Romp
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film tells the Bride’s story as a feminist and surreal romantic tale blending musicals, noir, and absurdist elements, emphasizing women’s right to choose.
- Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed a theatrical reimagining of Frankenstein, with Jessie Buckley playing the Bride/Ida and Shelley, in theaters this week.
- Drawing on Mary Shelley and 1935's The Bride of Frankenstein, Gyllenhaal relocates the story to an exaggerated 1936 Chicago to emphasize feminist themes like a woman's right to choose.
- The film devotes its entire two-hour-and-six-minute running time to Frank and Ida's relationship, mixing nightclub-musical and noir setpieces including a 'Puttin' on the Ritz' routine.
- Gyllenhaal's bold second feature signals artistic risk by testing storytelling limits and may influence awards, with critics saying its audacity could shape future work.
- Thematically, the movie foregrounds a woman's right to choose as its core, with Ida/The Bride inspiring revolt and women characters marked by black-ink mouth tattoos, though some reviewers find the repeated survivors' slogan 'Me too!' heavy-handed.
25 Articles
25 Articles
A feminist 'Bride' for Frankenstein
Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s gonzo revisionist take on James Whale’s 1935 “Bride of Frankenstein” is a "hellzapoppin’ cacophony of silly ideas and mad movie love, overhauling the queer-coded camp classic into a funhouse feminist manifesto," reviews critic Sean Burns.
With her second directorial work, Hollywood star Maggie Gyllenhaal wants to give the Frankenstein fabric a feminist touch. However, her film is overwhelmed with narration and operatic gestures.
FILM REVIEW. Maggie Gyllenhaal follows up her directorial debut "The Lost Daughter" with a retelling of the story of Frankenstein's iconic bride - from the bride's perspective
Frankenstein's myth returns to the cinema on Thursday, March 5, but with a reversal that puts the focus on the woman of history.The Bride!, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, proposes a radical rereading of the classic: giving voice to the character who historically did not have it.Atmosphered in the Chicago of the 1930s, the story follows Frank—the monster played by Christian Bale—and The Bride—Jessie Buckley—in an out-of-law romance th…
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