The Bride!

The Bride! is the new film from Maggie Gyllenhaal. While the film is at times visually audacious, this is a work that could have benefited from less “lets just do it” instead of giving in to whatever idea came to mind. It is a film that seems, in a way, to have almost been made up on the spot, yet it has none of the genuine vibrancy that comes from such improvisation. Instead, the always superb Jessie Buckley and the talented if often frustrating Christian Bale, find themselves in a work that is too sure of its genius. Here, the cast is not the biggest problem, for they give it their all, bringing energy if not interest, to their roles. Annette Benning is particularly under served here, as the “mad scientist” part of the proceedings.

Courtesy Warner Bros

Indeed, when the cast fails, such as the storyline involving a pair of detectives played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz, the film comes to a near crashing halt. Likewise with the mob storyline featuring John Magaro and Zlatko Buric as an underling and his boss. It is in these two stories that the film needs to most make logical sense and it is here where the flights of fancy crash and burn white hot.

This is a film where despite a magnificent assemblage of talent, and a bevy of audacious moments and concepts, nothing forms anything near a whole, be it convincing, compelling or otherwise. When “Frank” played by Bale-Frank is the creature from Shelly’s novel-decides to take a bride, he finds this in the form of Ida, a woman mixed up in Lupino’s (Buric) mob in 1936 Chicago, but who has also been targeted by the spirit of Shelly, determined to…tell her final story, apparently? When this possession takes place, the spirit of Shelly comes on like gangbusters, cursing, carousing and carrying on like a near X-rated take on the molls of old mob films.

Courtesy Warner Bros

This is where suspension of disbelief begins to be hard, because the real Mary Shelly was quite a different sort. That is fine, of course, because there is such a thing as creative license, even with real people. But it begins to become a real performance, a show of “look how daring and edgy we are” instead of simply allowing this to be an idea and character fully formed. Ida/Mary also never really grows, until far too late. Instead, she and Frank spend much of the film on the run, as a sort of monstrous “Bonnie and Clyde” but instead of hiding out or coming out only when absolutely necessary, they take risks at being exposed. Each time, they seem surprised, even angry, to have been noticed or caught.

There is only so much this reviewer can take when characters suffer from plot point stupidity. It is an illness for which only better writers and directors can act as the cure. Unfortunately, Maggie Gyllenhaal is not, here, the director her father is, though she is a remarkable actress who could perhaps herself have played The Bride and given it her own brand of weird, something Buckley, one of the great talents in the current world of cinema, sometimes fails to achieve. She and Bale groan and grimace their way through embarrassing scene after embarrassing scene, with Bale even less comprehensible here than when he was in his persona of Batman. Indeed, maybe casting James Spader or John Malkovich, would have lent Frank an air of otherworldliness that is absent in Bale’s grunting take. It is not customary for this reviewer to suggest alternate casting or story choices, but these were the thoughts occurring during the viewing. It is never a good sign when one can only think of how to improve or at least make more palatable, nearly every element of a film.

Courtesy Warner Bros

It is obvious there was passion here, and the makers must believe they turned in a product worthy of audience adoration. Yet, the product is ultimately dead on arrival, a corpse bursting with potential but unable to spark to life except to spew forth the most noxious of fumes. An enormous disappointment.

The Bride! is now playing in theaters.