The Bride! Review
With The Bride!, writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal takes a century-old myth, lays it flat on a bed on the laboratory floor, shatters it into a million pieces and reshapes it into something as jagged, gorgeous, and unhinged as Frankenstein’s Monster and makes it entirely her own. Acting as both an heirloom from times long past and something of a provocation, it respects its history and lineage while systematically ignoring any inherent rules and blowing them apart. Feral, beautiful, and wholly unique, the huge, wild swings hit far more than they miss for an experience unlike anything before.
From its opening moments, that blend past, present, future, real and surreal that plunge you immediately into its barmy world, The Bride! announces itself with the kind of audacity rarely seen in Hollywood in recent years. Bathed in both opulent colours and a moody hark back to the black and white aesthetics of the 30s and 40s, it’s a film where the fanciful meets the grotesque, swapping the predictable gothic undertones with satin, romanticism and a luminous glow, punctured by The Bride’s neon-fused orange silk dress that glows with romantic, sickly luminescence with every environment feeling alive, purposeful and narratively charged.
Much like Sinners last year, which has continued to gain a plethora of accolades since, it is so rare in these days of the extremes of franchises, IP, and streaming to see a studio film swing fso high for the fences so high and be so committed to reinvention rather than nostalgia. And the momentum is ferocious: Gyllenhaal, in her sophomore effort in the director’s chair, refuses a safe retelling, instead aiming for an altogether different creature, reimagining familiar stories and mythos with a boldness that feels invigorating and new. Giving a proper voice to The Bride, who had nothing but screams and hisses of fear in the original film, she uses her to explore themes of power, agency, and autonomy.
Setting aside the usual tropes that go hand in glove with Frankenstein – Guillermo del Toro’s masterful version can scratch that itch – she approaches it all from unexpected angles, stripping away the creation and focusing on a story about identity and the search for true self, transforming it into its own beast and giving a true voice to The Bride like never before. Not everything lands, and subplots revolving around Peter Sarsgaard’s detective and Jake Gyllenhaal’s beaming golden-era Hollywood icon feel light in comparison, but such is the majesty of the rest, you’ll be so deep under its spell to notice.
Said spell, of course, is the majesty of Jessie Buckley, who continues to ascend into the realm of immortality as a performer. A raw, mercurial and luminous tour-de-force, Buckley is a marvel (when is she not?). She is the perfect muse for Gyllenhaal, with her story of simmering fury and the camera worshipping at her feet, surrendering to her magnetism. For all the big swings here, it simply would not work were it not for Buckley’s leap of faith with no safety net. She is, once more, perfection.
Christian Bale, meanwhile, delivers one of his best turns for years. Tightly coiled yet endlessly compelling, he takes notes from Patrick Bateman, Batman, and The Machinist to create a dynamic yet fragile interpretation of the famous creature. Together, he and Buckley crackle, and they elevate the film’s emotional stakes and wild nature further than you are ready for, as well as delivering it all with two deeply human turns.
In a world where the relative safety of a $200million superhero film or a slice of nostalgia is much more likely to be greenlit than a bold, dangerous take on the Frankenstein myth, credit once more to Warner Bros for seeing the potential and uniqueness of The Bride!. It won’t win everyone over, and many will not be entranced by its audacity and fearlessness, but Gyllenhaal’s film is a one-of-a-kind experience that needs to be seen to be believed, even if it doesn’t ultimately do it for you. And that’s kind of the point: she hasn’t revived the myth, she’s revived possibility.
★★★★
In UK cinemas from March 6th / Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Julianne Hough, Jake Gyllenhaal, Penélope Cruz, John Magaro / Dir: Maggie Gyllenhaal / Warner Bros Pictures / 15
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