The Bride

Perhaps it’s fitting that from a narrative perspective, The Bride winds up as less than the sum of its stitched-together parts.

This ambitious Bride of Frankenstein reimagining from director Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter) combines elements of oddball romantic comedy, macabre body horror, introspective drama of self-discovery and feminist empowerment, and noir-infused vintage crime thriller.

Despite showcasing style and attitude to spare, however, the result doesn’t translate its bold vision into coherent execution.

In 1930s Chicago, Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) is a loner who finally realizes he needs to take desperate measures to find a date. So he engages a controversial scientist (Annette Bening) in his scheme to experiment with reanimating a dead woman for the perfect match.

They settle upon Ida (Jessie Buckley), digging up her corpse and hauling it into the lab. “Scientifically, ethically, there’s 100 things that can go wrong,” she cautions. “This is insane.”

Thus begins a whirlwind romance between two misfit outsiders and reckless lost souls, seeking companionship and fulfillment in a chaotic world. He’s drawn to her freewheeling impulses, defiant sense of independence, and wildly unkempt hair. She likes that he’s committed to accepting and protecting her at all costs.

As they relocate to the bright lights of New York, Frank’s showbiz dreams include the two of them pairing together in an Astaire-Rogers big-screen musical. One episode even spotlights his dancing abilities in an elaborate Vaudeville number.

But the real world is much harsher and more judgmental, prompting an anarchic whirlwind of crime and violence driven by rage and revenge that turns them into fugitive outlaws, with a detective (Peter Sarsgaard) and his cunning secretary (Penelope Cruz) in pursuit.

Buckley carries the film with a ferocious performance bristling with magnetic live-wire intensity. She also plays Ida’s tormented creator, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, who shares a dialogue as part of a pretentious framing device.

Gyllenhaal’s anachronistic screenplay is so tonally uneven that it inhibits our ability to see beyond the grotesquerie of their freak-show courtship and emotionally connect with Frank and Ida as they do with one another. They become objects of pity more than sympathy.

Despite evocatively immersing us in its various period settings, The Bride stumbles when trying to mesh fantasy with reality. Too often it seems Gyllenhaal is using her title character to deliver a lecture rather than just live her second life.

Rated R, 126 minutes.