Maggie Gyllenhaal, photographed in New York City in February. (David Urbanke \/ For The Times)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n It starts with the exclamation point, right there in the title. \u201cThe Bride!\u201d is a wild, willfully over-the-top double-barreled reinvigoration of 1935’s \u201cBride of Frankenstein\u201d that is always doing something a little extra in telling its unpredictable story of identity and the reclamation of the self.<\/p>\n \u201cI probably can’t definitively explain it,\u201d says writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal about that punctuation. \u201cI think I first just put it there and wondered when someone was going to tell me to take it away. And nobody ever did.\u201d<\/p>\n Set in a dreamscape 1930s \u2014 imagine a steampunk-meets-art-deco version of “Bonnie and Clyde” \u2014 the film features a title performance by Jessie Buckley<\/a> in three roles, sometimes in conversation with each other. First, there’s Ida, a Chicago party girl who is killed when she becomes an inconvenience to powerful men. Then there’s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d author Mary Shelley, taking possession of another person’s body and voice.<\/p>\n Finally, there’s the Bride herself, the rebellious, reanimated corpse of Ida brought back to life as a companion to a creature here known as Frank (Christian Bale). The duo sets off on a lovers-on-the-run-style crime spree that captures national attention.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b>The 14 movies we\u2019re most looking forward to in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n On a February Los Angeles morning, Gyllenhaal moves briskly across the lobby of a low-key-chic hotel, barely breaking stride to ask that, instead of a discreet celeb-friendly indoor corner table, perhaps our interview could take place on an outdoor patio. She would like to take in a bit more California sunshine before returning home to wintry Brooklyn.<\/p>\n Dressed in a baggy suit that is both sharp and casual, Gyllenhaal doesn\u2019t come across as particularly fussy but, rather, as someone certain of what she wants, even if what she wants is to explore the messiness of uncertainty, pushing the edges for herself and her collaborators.<\/p>\n Take, for example, that exclamation point. What might at first seem a bit of preciousness, and which even Gyllenhaal initially makes seem a bit of a throwaway, reveals itself to have a much deeper meaning.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that it was careless,” Gyllenhaal says with a calm focus. “If you are Ida or Mary Shelley or many women in the world and you’ve been sort of tamped down and silenced and not able to express everything it is that you wanted or needed to express, it\u2019s like if you’ve had your hand on a geyser. When the geyser finally breaks, it’s going to break with a whole lot of extra energy. And maybe that’s where the exclamation point comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Bride!\u201d is the second feature film as writer and director for Gyllenhaal, 48, following 2021\u2019s \u201cThe Lost Daughter.\u201d<\/a> That movie, a bracing examination of the psychological toll of motherhood, would go on to wide acclaim and awards recognition, including Oscar nominations for actors Buckley and Olivia Colman, as well as for Gyllenhaal\u2019s screenplay (an adaptation of the 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante). Prior to that, Gyllenhaal had been known for emotionally fearless performances in films such as \u201cSecretary,\u201d \u201cThe Dark Knight\u201d and \u201cCrazy Heart,\u201d for which she received a supporting actress Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n Deciding how to follow up \u201cThe Lost Daughter\u201d wasn\u2019t easy. Gyllenhaal says she went to a party and saw someone with a tattoo on their forearm of Elsa Lancaster’s intense gaze from \u201cBride of Frankenstein.\u201d Taken with the image, Gyllenhaal checked out the movie and was surprised to discover Lancaster’s iconic character was only in it for a few minutes. After reading the original novel of \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d she started to wonder whether Mary Shelley had other things on her mind at the time of her debut novel.<\/p>\n \u201cI just had this fantasy,\u201d she says with a slightly conspiratorial air. \u201cI’m not speaking for Mary Shelley, but there must have been some other, naughtier, wilder, more dangerous things that Mary Shelley wanted to say that weren’t said in \u2018Frankenstein.\u2019 What else might she have wanted to express?\u201d<\/p>\n And so Gyllenhaal set about writing, with her \u201cLost Daughter\u201d star in mind for the lead, though she initially didn\u2019t tell Buckley. One of Gyllenhaal\u2019s biggest learning curves in directing \u201cThe Lost Daughter\u201d was figuring out how to speak to each actor individually to get the most out of them.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Jessie, I just spoke to her like I speak to myself,\u201d Gyllenhaal said. \u201cNo translation needed.\u201d<\/p>\n Reached via email, the “Hamnet” star evokes a Frida Kahlo painting<\/a> to convey their closeness.<\/p>\n \u201cWe share two beating hearts,” Buckley says. “Maggie has absolutely been instrumental to waking me up to a part of myself I needed to know \u2014 and I think vice versa. We share a similar language and curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n Moving from the intimate scale of \u201cThe Lost Daughter\u201d to the expanded scope of \u201cThe Bride!\u201d was exciting for them both.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved seeing her in a bigger sandpit,\u201d Buckley says. \u201cFrom \u2018The Lost Daughter\u2019 it was clear that Maggie had something to say as an artist. But where do we grow? What\u2019s the scarier place? What are the questions we might whisper to ourselves? And what happens if we put those whispers into the ether?”<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal’s new film is unafraid to risk being too much. One extravagant party turns into a musical sequence that finds Bale’s creature singing and dancing to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” \u2014 a wink to a whole other self-aware frame of reference and Mel Brooks’ satirical 1974 “Young Frankenstein.”<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes it was too much<\/i> too much \u2014 that’s the line I was trying to walk,\u201d Gyllenhaal says. \u201cI think so many women are told that we’re too much, over and over again, from the moment we get here. And so I’m used to that.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I think that scene is sort of about that. It’s about a kind of explosion of life and humanity. So much of the movie is about these people who cannot fit into their box. This is where they celebrate their bigness, their too-muchness, their monstrousness. That’s the monster mash: ‘I am who I am.’\u201d<\/p>\n “Sometimes it was too much too much \u2014 that’s the line I was trying to walk,” Gyllenhaal says. “I think so many women are told that we’re too much, over and over again, from the moment we get here. And so I’m used to that.” (David Urbanke \/ For The Times)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Making a purposefully idiosyncratic retelling of a classic tale came with its own challenges. “The Bride!\u201d was originally scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. last fall, on the date that would eventually go to \u201cOne Battle After Another.\u201d When a rescheduled March 2026 opening was announced, there were reports \u2014 \u201cBeware ‘reports,’ \u201d Gyllenhaal tells me, wryly \u2014 of behind-the-scenes clashes between the director and the studio.<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal doesn’t deny that, to find the final version of the movie, she worked closely with Pam Abdy<\/a>, who, along with Mike De Luca, is co-chair and co-chief executive of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group. This time the stakes were higher, the filmmaker says, and being left to her own devices, as she had been on “The Lost Daughter,” wasn’t always the best solution.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I make a big, hot roller coaster of a movie and remain totally honest in what I’m trying to explore and think about inside it, will people respond? That was my question,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then I cut it in a way that was entirely my expression. And I have to say in particular, Pam, who was my point person on this and also has become a friend, she really took me to task on that and said, \u2018You want many people to respond and understand this. You have to clarify here and here.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Though Gyllenhaal admits there were moments of \u201cfriction\u201d and that Abdy \u201chas a slightly different agenda than I do,\u201d she now sees the merit in the process. \u201cSomething really alive was born, and I think the movie is better for the work that she and I did together,” Gyllenhaal says. “I know that’s an unusual thing to say. I know that you have lots of people saying like, \u2018Ah, the studio f\u2014 my movie up.\u2019 That is not my experience. It’s really not.\u201d<\/p>\n In a phone interview, Abdy says, \u201cListen, she tasks me with challenging her, and I task her with challenging us. We’re all in the service of making the best movie we can possibly make for the audience. And we, privately, all of us \u2014 studios, directors, filmmakers \u2014 we go through a process. It’s unfortunate that certain people choose to assume they know what’s happening in those rooms. But they don’t.”<\/p>\n Abdy describes their collaboration as a healthy and normal one. \u201cYou test the movie, you get information, you make adjustments,” she says. “And we needed the time and space to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n The courage Gyllenhaal once exhibited as a performer now seems to be serving her as a filmmaker. The last feature Gyllenhaal appeared in as an actor was 2018\u2019s \u201cThe Kindergarten Teacher,\u201d<\/a> playing an overzealous mentor to a young poetry prodigy. She also appeared in three seasons of the HBO series \u201cThe Deuce\u201d from 2017 to 2019, in which she played an adult film performer struggling to move behind the camera into directing.<\/p>\n As to whether she will return to acting, Gyllenhaal says, \u201cI don’t know. I really prefer directing. This is a better job for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Better how? “I felt as an actress, to be honest, like I always would hit up against a wall of how much I was able to participate or express,” she says. “And I thought for a long time, OK, this is the gig, and what I have to do is learn how to protect self-expression, even if that means I just need a tiny bit of space around me where I have the real estate to do what I need to do as an actress.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then when I moved into writing and directing, I didn’t have to play that game anymore,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd also I could create an environment where nobody had to play that game. Anyone could explore and express the things that were interesting to them. It was ultimately up to me to decide if I wanted to use them or not. So why not let people explore and surprise me?\u201d<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” may catch the same current wave of pop-inflected Gothic-style romances as Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.” A catchphrase that emerges in the film is \u201cbrain attack,\u201d the Bride becoming a folk hero to women around the country who emulate her distinctive look: Jean Harlow by way of Courtney Love with an inky smear of makeup across the face.<\/p>\n There is something intuitively catchy about brain attack, even if it’s also a little bewildering.<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal remembers an “aspect of terror” about stepping into a bigger studio release. “So do most things that require that you really grow and learn in order to do them. But I’m interested in terror and so I guess I was playing around with the idea of heart attack, panic attack. And I think in order to really do that, some brain attacks are required.\u201d<\/p>\n Gyllenhaal tells me how a few days earlier she had been wearing a hat with the phrase on it while reading by the hotel pool and three 20-something women, maybe a little day drunk, began asking her about it. Two of them seemed puzzled by the phrase, struggling to parse out its meaning, while the third instinctively got it. She just knew. So Gyllenhaal gave her the hat.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess \u2018brain attack\u2019 is a phrase you might have to feel<\/i>,\u201d Gyllenhaal offers, her mouth widening into a smile.<\/p>\n So too, perhaps, with Gyllenhaal\u2019s telling of \u201cThe Bride!\u201d with its visions of reckless abandon and personal reclamation \u2014 exclamation point and all. It will become a movie waiting for those who need it.<\/p>\n<\/div>