There are far too few mainstream films made by women so, at one level, we have to welcome Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second offering after her restrained and refined work in “The Lost Daughter”. “The Bride!” is absolutely Gyllenhaal’s film: she wrote, directed and produced it and her brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) and her husband (Peter Sarsgaard) star in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is also Jessie Buckley’s movie: following on from her success in “Hamnet”, this tour de force performance in the eponymous role cements her reputation as an outstanding actress. In this overtly feminist story, two other leading roles go to women: Annette Bening as the ‘mad’ scientist and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz as the smart (in both senses of the word) detective. The always-impressive Christian Bale is the Frankenstein figure, so this is a movie with star-power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film is a wild rage of expression and a riot of eclectic visual and aural material, but sadly with too little thought for narrative coherence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Visually, we have a cornucopia of colours, whether make-up, costumes or sets, with everything from dancing and singing to chasing and shooting and many reminders of “Bonnie And Clyde”. Musically, we have a mixture of classical work (including Schubert), jazz and cabaret (including Irving Berlin), and the modern work of Hildur Guonad\u00f3ttir (known for her work on “Joker” and “T\u00e1r”). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What we don’t have is a plot which is comprehensible and intelligible. So this a hugely ambitious and never-dull movie that ultimately falls disappointingly flat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are far too few mainstream films made by women so, at one level, we have to welcome Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second offering after her restrained and refined work in “The Lost Daughter”. “The Bride!” is absolutely Gyllenhaal’s film: she wrote, directed and produced it and her brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) and her husband (Peter Sarsgaard) star […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30087,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30086\/revisions\/30087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}