Written and Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal | 126 min | ▲▲1/2
A raucous, semi-inspired reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the way Universal turned the myth into a franchise, not to be confused with this one from the 1980s. This is a deeply feminist vision, coming from actor-turned-filmmaker Gyllenhaal, whose solid first film, The Lost Daughter, couldn’t have been more different. Here she’s throwing so many ideas against the wall some of them stick, some don’t, but a lack of focus has the picture collapse in the homestretch.
The opening act is a whole lot of fun, though. We’re introduced to this story by Mary Shelley (Jesse Buckley) herself, who’s been trapped in some otherworldly black and white limbo for decades, but somehow manages to possess a young woman in 1930s Chicago, Ida (Buckley again), when she eats an oyster. This sudden possession makes Ida speak in tongues — fantastic, hilarious and wordy monologues channelling two personalities, one a Chicago moll, the other a furious 19th century British writer— to the chagrin of the local gangster, Lupino (Zlatko Buric). Thanks to his thugs (John Magaro and Matthew Maher) Ida sleeps with the fishes.
Meanwhile, a European stranger with a shifting accent and a lot of scars shows up in town — Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale), who goes by Frank. He wants the help of a local scientist, Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), to see if she can create a mate for him. She’s absolutely against the idea until suddenly she’s all for it, and somehow retrieves Ida’s fresh corpse. Using ye olde electricity and steampunk machines she breathes life back into her (and the ghost of Mary). Ida is alive, but doesn’t remember who she is.
It doesn’t take long for Ida — now named Penny — and Frank to get friendly. They spend some time on the town in an entirely anachronistic club (featuring Fever Ray performing) and Penny’s extroversion seems to suit Frank’s more restrained demeanour. It also doesn’t take long for his deep-seated anger to manifest on two dudes in an alley who get violent with her. From there the couple is on the run, a tattooed Bonnie & Clyde, colourful predecessors of Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers, off to New York, always stopping in at cinemas to watch movies starring toe-tapping matinee idol Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). A couple of cops, Myrna (Penélope Cruz, miscast) and Jake (Peter Sarsgaard), pick up their trail.
The chemistry and confidence in the double-act of Buckley and Bale is what makes this sing, the times that it does. Disappointingly, Penny’s possession wanes as we go along — some of the best bits have her flipping between personas, playing with words, and raging against mediocre men around her.
The movie feels like it’s building up to a musical — and in one scene in New York it finally and delightfully gets there, full-on song and dance — but that kind of energy is hard to sustain. It’s too bad, it actually might’ve worked better as a musical. You can feel it straining toward something, but a little like Emerald Fennell’s recent “Wuthering Heights,” it’s not quite transgressive enough — it echoes a lot of other, better movies, and with the volcanic pair at the centre we can enjoy just spending time with them, but then they don’t quite have enough to do, or a big enough emotional arc.
Calling a film plot-driven is considered criticism by many, but this is a movie with compelling characters where the plot lets them down. By the third act they’re just spinning their bolts, and we’re a little bored waiting for a fairly predictable conclusion.
Gyllenhaal has so many ideas — themes of repression, oppression, independence, liberation, emancipation, celebrity, and male loneliness, to name just a few I was able to pick up on. The costumes (the legendary Sandy Powell, always a delight) are terrific, the hair and make-up on point — I love the inky black splotches on Penny’s lips, face, and arms — but sadly it ends up being a movie that’s almost always interesting without actually being very good.
