Maclean's Monday, August 19, 1985 Beauty and the beast; THE BRIDE Directed by Franc Roddam by Lawrence O'Toole

 

Contrary to press reports, The Bride is not a remake of the 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein. It is not even a horror film. The movie, despite its flaws and occasional clumsiness, is in a class by itself. The action takes up where The Bride of Frankenstein left off: Baron Frankenstein (Sting) has just created a female counterpart of his monster during a violent electrical storm. But this time the woman is not designed as a companion for the monster but for Frankenstein himself. Instead of the monster retaliating, as he did in the 1935 film by immolating Frankenstein and his "bride" along with himself, he escapes the flames and goes his own way. The opening sequence of The Bride has a marvellously damp and chilly atmosphere and is cloaked in shadow. With a visual design and emotional tenor all its own, the movie is a highly sophisticated Gothic romance.

Frankenstein calls his creation Eva and he intends to make a "new woman" out of her -- "as bold and as proud as a man." A frail, dissipated creature with a shock of raven ringlets, Eva (Jennifer Beals) has no idea where she came from. Frankenstein tells her she was found in the woods, ill and amnesiac, but all her instincts tell her that is not true. With a secret relish, he goes about remaking her, giving her all the appurtenances of civilized behavior and eventually introducing her into society.

The script makes the mistake of telling two different stories separately: that of Frankenstein and Eva as well as that of the male creature's adventures. But director Franc Roddam manages to crosscut the two stories effectively, contrasting them both starkly and subtly. In his travels, Frankenstein's male creation meets a cheery dwarf named Rinaldo (David Rappaport) who gives him the name Viktor and suggests that they go to Budapest to join the circus. While Frankenstein makes Eva over for his own purposes, Rinaldo does the same with Viktor, but selflessly.

Although it is in no way a remake of The Bride of Frankenstein, The Bride shares many qualities with the James Whale classic. It has a similar ingenuousness and it is unafraid of emotion. The bond between Rinaldo and Viktor becomes touchingly comic: they appear mismatched, yet their circus act is the one that draws the crowds. But their friendship is doomed, as are most pure things in the movie. The Bride lavishes great affection upon innocence, whether Viktor's or Eva's. During her first social outing, Eva stuns the rest of the people in the room by screaming and snarling at a cat which has sat in front of her. Later she explains to Frankenstein, "I thought it was a tiny lion." The humor in The Bride has an edge: it is always connected to danger of some sort.

The Bride is one of the few recent period movies to conjure up a bygone era in a satisfying manner, both emotionally and physically (it was shot in extremely convincing European locations). Beals's face is ravishingly beautiful: she looks like an authentic Gothic heroine, a fairy-tale beauty; and Clancy Brown, with his outsized frame and wounded, animal-like eyes, makes the perfect beast for her.

As well, the film displays a childlike wonder about emotion -- love, jealousy, anger, fear -- that to some members of the audience might seem insufferably primitive, even howlingly funny. But what The Bride happens to have is that rare commodity in modern movies -- an uncalculated sweetness. That quality informs every frame of the movie and it helps build the story toward the final terror when both the villagers and Frankenstein threaten Viktor and Eva. Frankenstein's own creation finally turns on him. "You can never have me!" Eva tells him in their final confrontation. He has created her to have the pleasure of raping her, and the thought becomes a shocking one.

Unfortunately, Sting's performance is far too bland, without either passion or charisma. There is no sense of obsession in Frankenstein's mania. Sting's work would have spoiled a lesser movie. But it would take much more to sour the dark romanticism of The Bride. At the heart of the film is a gnawing terror that love, so difficult to find, will be so easily lost. In The Bride anxiety flickers across the faces of its characters like late-night candle flames.

GRAPHIC: Picture, Beals, Sting: a highly sophisticated Gothic romance with a unique emotional tenor

 

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