Here Comes THE Mother F#©king BRIDE!
THE BRIDE! trailer is here (scroll down to watch). Maggie Gyllenhaal says she wanted to “tell the truth” about “the monstrous aspects inside of every single one of us” — but do it “in a big, pop way…that’s hot.”
For me, this version of The Bride and Frank turns them into a 1930s punk rock duo. And comic fans will catch stylings of Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti’s Harley Quinn, but with a more evolved Joker in Bale’s Frankenstein (the monster, of course). There is also a blood infusion from the real-life crime couple of the early 30s, Bonnie and Clyde, but with influences from True Romance, Natural Born Killers, and Chicago, the musical’s, flair. With all of those elements giving it life, THE BRIDE! looks like a killer cinematic experience. Gyllenhaal even name-checks Bonnie & Clyde (1967)—plus Badlands, Metropolis, and Wild at Heart—as part of the movie’s stylistic DNA, so the outlaw-romance voltage is absolutely on purpose.
THE DESCRIPTION (Mostly from Warner Bros.)
A film by Maggie Gyllenhaal (Academy Award-nominated writer/director of The Lost Daughter), starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale: Here comes THE BRIDE! — a bold, iconoclastic take on one of the world’s most compelling stories, shot through with bruised romance and snarling, back-alley attitude: a lonely Frankenstein (Bale) heads to 1930s Chicago to enlist groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) to build him a companion, and when they revive a murdered young woman, The Bride (Buckley) is born—then everything detonates into something neither of them saw coming: Murder! Possession! A wild and radical cultural movement! And outlaw lovers in a wild and combustible romance!
The film stars Buckley, Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, with Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Penélope Cruz, with Gyllenhaal directing from her own screenplay.
MORE FROM MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL
The first inspiration for the whole thing kicked off in a random way: “I was at a party, and I saw a man with a tattoo… of The Bride of Frankenstein.” Then Gyllenhaal rewatched the classic and clocked an icon, Elsa Lanchester, who makes a massive impact even though “she’s in the movie for three minutes and doesn’t speak.” Those eyes, that hair, the horror.
This time, the Bride isn’t a plot bunny. Gyllenhaal zeroed in on the question the old myth dodges: Frankenstein wants a mate, “but at the same time, like, what about the mate?” This Bride comes back with “her own needs and her own agenda and her own wants and her own terrors,” and she’s driven by identity as much as survival: she returns “not knowing who she is… without any compass,” and part of her agenda is simply “who am I?”
The setting is a dreamy, remixed 1930s to capitalize on Hollywood magic. Frankenstein is lonely enough that his “primary relationship is with a movie star.” It’s so very parasocial, and the story plays in the tension between “fantasy…versus reality.”
Visually, the rebellion of The Bride’s smeared-black-mouth splatter has an in-world reason, “this black inky, tar stuff that is part of the formula… that brings you back to life,” says Gyllenhaal. She wanted it to “stain her skin” in a way that’s “graphic” and “gorgeous.” She also went full storytelling-nerd with IMAX—using a shifting frame so “when we went into someone’s dream life… mind… [and] hit the magic, we would grow,” and she says IMAX told her the production’s animated approach “hasn’t ever been done like this before.”
And yes, Gyllenhaal is channeling the punk energy—down to the vibe pick of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ cover of “The Passenger,” because the Bride might be labeled the passenger, “when that is absolutely not what she is. She’s driving this story.”
THE BRIDE! comes to theaters Mar 6
