Tag: feminist

THE BRIDE! – Review

If you love classic movies, THE BRIDE! is pure delight, fun with a brain that is a treat deluxe for those who love both classic movies and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s original book “Frankenstein.” That description fits this writer and the novel is having a moment now, with Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN and now this film. But in this wild, smart and inventive film, director Maggie Gyllenhaal not only pays homage to the book, but the Frankenstein and particularly Bride of Frankenstein movies, along with a host of 1930s and 1940s films and genres, ranging from film noir to black-and-white musicals and gangster flicks, with a little more modern films like BONNIE AND CLYDE and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN tossed in. Even author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley herself, the brilliant teenager who wrote the original 1818 novel, appears as a character in the film.

All that plus a fabulous cast, led by Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley, featuring Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz. The film sports a generous sprinkling of movie and even literary references, in dialog or visually, which adds a great deal of fun. And it is all done with an off-beat slight feminist twist that puts the spotlight on the The Bride.

Plus the ghost of author Mary Shelley possesses a gangster’s moll and a woman is the mad scientist in this tale. What more could you possibly want?

THE BRIDE is both clever and a very cinematic film. THE BRIDE! actually opens with the author Mary Shelley (played in a entertainingly crazy way by Jesse Buckley) speaking to us as a spirit from the grave. We see only Buckley’s face, in an oval and in black-and-white, like an antique photo in a locket, while the author spits rapid-fire vocabulary about her biography and literature. The author introduces our story, and then returns as occasional narrator or disruptive spirit. This begins when Shelley possesses, like a demon, a young blonde gangster’s moll named Ida (also Buckley) in 1930s Chicago. The possessed moll, when the author is in charge, spouts poetry and literary references, particularly mentioning Herman Melville’s character Bartleby, who sows chaos by refusing to do things, saying “I prefer not to,” a phrase that pops up continually.

After our (ultimately violent) intro to the woman who will become the Bride, we meet Frankenstein’s monster, played winningly by Christian Bale. A man in a hat pulled low to hide his face and with a scarf covering his lower face (a la Claude Rains in THE INVISIBLE MAN) shows up at a 1930s Chicago medical research facility, looking to speak to a particular scientist, a Dr. Euphronious. He’s turned away at first, but finally a woman comes out to talk to him. She reveals herself to be Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), as he removes his coverings and introduces himself as a Mr. Frankenstein (Bale). This lonely creation of a mad scientist (and an author) long ago asks the scientist for her help – to build a bride for him. She refuses at first but, good mad scientist that she is, Dr. Euphronious eventually agrees.

Thus launches the tale of the Bride and her Frankenstein, a far more complete story of the Bride than in James Whale’s classic film, including this Bride’s quest for a name, an identity, beyond just that one. The pair embark on an adventure and a journey that sends them out into the 1930s world, against the wishes of Dr. Euphonious, where they sample jazz clubs and movie houses, among other things, and then go on the run as outlaws, “Bonnie and Clyde”-style, after some people turn up dead.

Frank, as the Bride calls him, is movie-obsessed and particularly a fan of one dancing star (Jake Gyllenhaal) of movie musicals, which reveals that the “monster” is a bit of a romantic. When he’s feeling low, at trip to the movies to see his favorite star in one of his dance-filled musical romances or comedies lifts his spirits.

Their adventure is unpredictable, often violent and sometimes bloody, but it is also a monster of a love story. The Bride’s journey of self-discovery is a big part of this film but not the whole story. It is also a wild, entertaining ride, that also involved a pair of noir-ish detectives, played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz, on their trail, as well as gangster kingpins, corrupt officials, fancy parties with movie stars, and more. There is singing and dancing scenes, movie-going and movie houses, characters who find themselves in the movie (a la Buster Keaton), and a score that includes “Putting on the Ritz” (thank you, Mel Brooks) and Monster Mash.

The cast is great. Christian Bale is a marvelous Frankenstein, sweetly polite, even shy, but determined and endlessly resourceful. He is also a hopeless romantic when it comes to his Bride and to the movies he loves. Bale plays this movie-loving monster with such charm and grace, he is irresistible, and turns on extra magic in the dance sequences. Jessie Buckley is electrifying in her two-part role, as the wild, fast-talking and brainy author, who periodically possesses the Bride and as the sweet but confused newly-created Bride, who does not even know her name, much less who she is, or should be. The couple waver between love and her desire to be her own person. And along the way, her rule-breaking launches a social movement of women who want to break free of their restraints in this sexist time, women who show their colors by staining their mouths with ink, to look like hers.

Annette Bening is a charmer as well as the crusty, off-beat doctor, who we suspect has secrets and a history that goes unspoken. As the noir detectives, Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz also are wonderful, with Sarsgaard playing a world-weary soul with some hidden pain, and Cruz an ambitious detective who is the real brains of the team but who has to pose as her partner’s secretary rather than his protege due to the sexism of the era.

THE BRIDE! is entertaining, smart, thought-provoking, twisting, and a cleverly constructed creation of borrowed parts (much like Frankenstein) from countless classic films, film history, literature and even a little echo of the “Me Too” movement. THE BRIDE! is a wow of a piece of cinema, and certainly a must-see for any fan of either classic movies or Mary Shelley’s classic Gothic horror novel. Just great fun.

THE BRIDE! opens in theaters on Friday, Mar. 6, 2026.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

LEE – Review

Andy Samberg as David E Scherman and Kate Winslet as Lee Miller, in LEE. Photo by Kimberley French. Courtesy of Roadside Attractions and Vertical.

The name Lee Miller may not be familiar but you have most likely seen her photos, some of the first and most iconic of Nazi concentration camps, taken immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany. The photos show concentration camp survivors and the dead, which proved that the wartime rumors of the Holocaust were true. Lee Miller’s shocking, heartbreaking photos were published in an article titled “Believe It” in American Vogue, dispelling doubts about what had happened in Germany.

That a fashion magazine like Vogue would be the one that published them seems highly unlikely, yet so was the career and life of Lee Miller. Directed by acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kura, making her feature film directorial debut, the stirring, inspirational drama LEE takes audiences from Lee Miller’s days as a New York fashion model-turned fashion photographer in Paris, who is living a life of pleasure among such important artistic figures as Picasso (Enrique Arce) and surrealist art photographer Man Ray (Samuel Barnett), who mentored her, to her years as a war correspondent and photographer in France and then post-war in Germany.

Kate Winslet gives a breathtaking performance, both as the older Lee Miller and the younger one in pre-war Paris, wartime London and France, and post-war Germany. The older Lee, chain-smoking and downing scotch, recounts her amazing career to a young interviewer (Josh O’Connor), in a framing device that brackets the historical tale.

LEE also features a host of stars, including Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgard, Andrea Riseborough, and Marion Cotillard, and a lot of famous names, in this true story.

Lee Miller started out as a fashion model in New York, achieving success in that field but Miller longed switch careers to photography, a life-long passion. Saying she was done with modeling, Lee moved to Paris, and the drama picks up Lee’s story there, where she is living a high-octane bohemian life, as part of a social circle that includes Pablo Picasso and surrealist photographer Man Ray, who was her mentor and lover. Lee is growing dissatisfied with that life when she meets British artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard).

Persuaded to join Penrose in London, Miller escapes shortly before the Nazis invade France, trapping her old friends. In London, Miller gets the chance to break into photography, as a fashion photographer working for editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) who also employs Cecil Beaton, the royal family’s favorite photographer, who snubs the model-turned-photog. As WWII sweeps across Europe, Lee Miller fights to be able to cover the war, finally returning to France and teaming up with Jewish American photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg), who was working for Life magazine.

As the war ends, Miller and Scherman race to Germany to capture photographic evidence of Hitler’s evil. The bold, bohemian Lee Miller also finds Hitler’s now vacant apartment, where she and Scherman collaborate on a famous photo of a nude Miller in Hitler’s bath tub with her muddy boots from her visit to Dachau next to the tub, a shot taken just as Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.

Before Lee and Scherman leave post-war Paris for newly-fallen Germany, Lee finds one her French friends from her carefree pre-London days, Solange D’Ayen (played movingly by Marion Cotillard, in a heartbreaking performance), who hiding in a deserted Nazi command center. Solange has been shattered by the war, and her imprisonment by the Nazis, and now, post war, she waits for her missing husband to return. Lee also encounters other old friends, Paul Eluard (Vincent Colombre), a poet and French Jew, and his wife Nusch Eluard (Noemie Merlant).

Winslet transforms herself from the elegant, hedonistic model-turned-photographer into a fearless, hard-drinking, tough war correspondent Lee became during the war and post-war. It is a showcase performance but both Winslet and Samberg are wonderful in their scenes together, showing real chemistry between the actors. Samberg’s Scherman is steady and reliable but finally briefly breakdowns emotionally after Dachau, crying out about “his people” and Hitler’s evil, in a moving scene. Both Samberg’s Davy Scherman and Winslet’s Lee Miller are passionate about their work, willing to face danger in the field to tell this important story and record it for history. On the other hand, Alexander Skarsgard’s aristocratic Brit Roland Penrose remains a pacifist, who opposes Hitler but does not comprehend Lee’s fearless willingness to place herself in harm’s way.

First-time director Ellen Kura crafts inspiring, powerful film filled with dramatic photography as LEE tells the too-little known story of this fearless, feminist, one-of-a-kind woman who broke barriers for women war correspondents, as she and fellow American war photojournalist Davy Scherman (Andy Samberg) covered the war and then pushed on to post-war Germany. If the film has a flaw, it is in the somewhat awkward framing device, although at the drama’s end you learn why it was used. However, it is a small flaw in an otherwise outstanding film, featuring an outstanding performance from Winslet, playing a historical figure whose name should be better known. Lee Miller left a photographic record of the horrors of Hitler’s hate, and her famous, emotionally-powerful photos still appear in countless books and articles about the Holocaust.

LEE opens Friday, Sept. 27, at multiple area theaters.

RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars



POOR THINGS – Review

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in POOR THINGS. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Smart, clever and inventive, POOR THINGS is described by the filmmakers as “the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman brought back to life from the brink of death by the brilliant, daring scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe).” Based on the novel by the late Scottish author Alasdair Gray, director Lanthimos and scriptwriter Tony McNamara also reference Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” making this off-beat coming-of-age fantasy a kind of “feminist Frankenstein” that is part dark comedy, part adventure thriller and pure smart entertaining fantasy with an uplifting message.

POOR THINGS is a wild science fiction coming-of-age tale set in an alternate Victorian world that is part steam punk and part anachronistic fantasy from the writer/director who gave us THE FAVORITE and THE LOBSTER, Yorgos Lanthimos. It is also a whole lot of fun and an eye-popping visual treat, in which a young innocent meets a villain but it upends melodrama rules by essentially rescuing herself. The film is somewhat in the vein of a coming-of-age sexual romp like “Tom Jones” but flips the script on that male-centric sexual adventure by putting a young woman on that rule-breaking journey, making it a rollicking feminist adventure tale. Some of those adventures are bawdy, as they would be if the lead character were a young man, and the whole tale relishes breaking the rescue-the-maiden rules of melodrama.

Lanthimos and McNamara also collaborated on THE FAVOURITE, and audiences familiar with that fantasy retelling of Queen Anne’s real relationship with her closest friend, and with Lanthimos’s darker THE LOBSTER, know that this director can skillfully balance dark humor with thriller and even horror themes, turning from one to the other on the proverbial dime but without audience whiplash.

Set in a Victorian fantasy world that is part steam punk and part Merchant-Ivory film, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone ) is the creation of brilliant, eccentric scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Curious, energetic Bella has the body of a beautiful young woman but the brain of a baby, the result of Dr. Baxter’s experiment to save two lives by reviving a recently-dead body. We watch as Bella quickly grows from precocious as a curious child to an intellectually questing, sexually curious as a young woman eager to learn about the wider world.

Bella longs to explore the world beyond her sheltered home with her protective father-creator Dr. Godwin Baxter, whom she calls “God.” When the inquisitive woman-child also shows sexual curiosity, the doctor arranges for his medical student protege Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef) to become engaged to her. While Bella likes her new fiance, she is tempted by tales of the wider world told by crafty, unethical cad Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), and runs off with the villain.

While Dr. Baxter and Bella’s fiance are in frantic pursuit of the runaways, Ruffalo’s serial exploiter plans to seduce the innocent Bella and then discard her, of course. But Bella herself turns the tables on this familiar plot,” rescuing” her herself in her own way, while embarking on a grand tour combined with intellectual, philosophical and feminist coming-of-age journey.

This old-fashioned melodrama set-up is played for both drama and tongue-in-cheek comedy, with scenes sometimes mixing both serious and humorous. Bella embarks on an adventure that has a strong elements of “Tom Jones,” a continent-spanning journey that is a sexual adventure and intellectual/philosophical exploration, with a definite feminist twist. Who is exploiting who becomes the question.

Emma Stone gives an outstanding performance as the brilliant, irrepressible Bella, perhaps Stone’s career best so far, creating a character who is constantly surprising yet irresistible. Mark Ruffalo is also excellent as the villainous abductor, who more than gets his just desserts. Willem Dafoe’s doctor looks like an experiment gone wrong but turns out to have a heart of gold and Ramy Youssef makes his sweet, loyal assistant more than we expect too. The film is peppered with other memorable characters, with striking performances by Christopher Abbot , Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, and Margaret Qualley particularly.

POOR THINGS is a visual banquet, thanks to cinematography by Director of Photography Robbie Ryan, and production designers James Price and Shona Heath, and costume designer Holly Waddington. The colorful, creative costumes signal that we are in a very different world. From the waist up, Bella looks the picture of Victorian modesty, with high collars, ruffles, and puffy shoulders, but below the waist, she is dressed in mini-skirts, shorts, or skirts of gauzy fabric. Everyone else is dressed in proper Victorian attire, yet no one notices Bella’s wild, revealing outfits. The gorgeous sets are all lush Belle Epoque, Beaux-Arts architecture and plush velvet furniture, but with unexpected little visual twists to remind us we are in the realm of the fantastic.

This mix of dark humor, sexual adventure and feminist empowerment means POOR THINGS adds up to a very entertaining, smart movie, with both a brain and a heart, and topped by an uplifting message that will leave you bouncing out of the theater.

POOR THINGS opens Friday, Dec. 22, in theaters.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN – Review

Carey Mulligan stars as “Cassandra” in director Emerald Fennell’s PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features

Carey Mulligan gives a fearless, powerhouse performance as a once-promising young woman who now spends her nights prowling bars, posing as a drunken woman to exact revenge on would-be rapists, in PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN. Director Emerald Fennel’s smart, clever, darkly-funny film is an equally fearless take down of rape culture and its enablers, a film that straddles the lines between thriller, dark comedy and drama genres. The surprising, and surprisingly entertaining, PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is at once a highly entertaining experience, a hard-hitting attack on rape culture, and an impressive showcase for Mulligan. The film calls itself a comedy, but while there is dark humor, it is more complicated than that. A bracing but unexpected mix of dark humor, thriller tension veering into horror, pointed but indirect social commentary and powerful drama, PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is hard to categorize, but the whole thing is propelled by Carey Mulligan’s remarkable performance.

We first meet Cassandra (Carey Mulligan) – Cassie for short – as a predator hunting predators. She hangs out in bars and clubs, acting as if she is so drunk she can’t stand. The drunken act draws in a certain kind predator, a man who appears to be a nice guy at first, compared to his openly sexist friends, who seems kind in offering her a ride home. But once they are out of the bar, there is a detour to his place and more liquor for the already-soused woman. But once he gets her on the bed and starts removing her clothes, Cassie suddenly reveals she is not drunk at all – and the would-be predator is now her prey.

By night, Cassie prowls the bars, dressed in low-cut tight dresses and sporting bright red lipstick, on her mission of revenge. By day, Cassie is all little girl innocence, dressing in pink and wears braids, living in a pink and frilly bedroom in her parents’ house. After her nightly outings, she writes in a pink diary, but it is filled with red and black Xs, the meaning of which is left to our imagination.

Her name is a tip-off, a reference to the Greek myth of the oracle whose prophetic warnings are always ignored. But this revenge thriller is tricky, turning tables on us in scenes where we expect graphic sex or violence, cutting away from a presumed bloody revenge to jump forward to Cassie sauntering home in the morning light, with a stripe of red dripping down her arm as she dines on hot dog bun filled with….something. The scene is horrifying and darkly funny at the same time, with a comic book twist.

This is a revenge thriller for the Me Too hashtag era, an intelligent and hard-hitting satire. The darkly comic switch up seems to point us towards horror/comedy but while PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN bills itself as a comedy, albeit a very dark one, there is more going on here than just humor – far more – with a swerve towards psychological drama and damning commentary on rape culture. PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is hard to categorize, but the whole thing is grounded by Carey Mulligan’s striking performance.

Cassie dresses like a teenager but close-ups of her face show she clearly is not. Her parents are puzzled by what their brilliant daughter, once a “promising young woman,” is doing with her life. She is working a coffee shop since suddenly dropping out of medical school, after her best friend, and fellow med student, was raped by another student, an event that devastated the friend. Cassie’s parents have no idea where she goes at night or her secret revenge missions. For her thirtieth birthday, her parents give her a suitcase – pink, of course – a not-so-subtle hint about what they want to happen.

Cassie’s one friend appears to be her boss (Laverne Cox) at the coffee shop, where they engage in rounds of sarcastic humor with little concern for customers.

The candy-colored, little-girl life Cassie lives by day and the “bad girl” disguise she adopts by night, donning black leather and red lipstick, are part of the satirical feminist commentary on this bold film, which was also written by director Fennell. It is a brave performance by Carey Mulligan, whose face is lit to emphasis that she is no longer as young as Cassie acts, yet Mulligan pulls this off brilliantly, in a perfect mix, as she sarcastic blends the little girl world of pink bows with the seething anger of a woman bent of revenge. Besides its lists of red and black marks, her pink diary also has a list of men’s names, fellow med students who were there when her friend was raped or were complicit in the cover-up.

Mulligan is perfectly cast, with her sweet face and deep well of talent, and delivers a tour-de-force performance that mines the depths of this character and squeezes out every nuance and detail. By turns, Cassie is terrifying and heart-tugging, someone so broken yet so human. It is no mean feat for any actor to pull off, yet Mulligan does so brilliantly.

Director Fennell has a lot of fun with the art direction, filling the screen with shades of pink and little-girl themes, used in ironic fashion. At one pivotal point in the story, when isolated Cassie reconnects with Ryan (Bo Burnham), a former med school classmate who seeks her out at coffee shop and a tentative romance begins, the color shifts from pink to a mix of baby blue and pink, and becoming more blue, as Cassie seems to relax her focus on vengeance. At times it feels as if the colors are struggling for dominance, the angry pink versus the peaceful blue, as Cassie struggles with her inner demons and past betrayals.

Fennell also makes good ironic use of the soundtrack, peppering it with tidbits like “It’s Raining Men,” musical choices that either sharpen the humor, the heartbreak or the horror. From time to time, the film does seem headed for familiar horror film territory, only to swerve away and take us somewhere unexpected, then veer back. It all makes the ending all the more shocking.

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is on the year’s best, a complex film that is both entertaining and thought-provoking, with a strange but hypnotic mix of satire, social commentary and human drama. It is in theaters and streaming on demand on Jan. 15.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars

TAPE – Review

Isabelle Fuhrman as Isabelle in Deborah Kampmeier’s harrowing, true-story based #MeToo drama TAPE. Photo courtesy Full Moon Films.

TAPE opens with images of the mutilated character Lavinia from Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus,” followed by horrific footage of a young woman strapping a camera to her belly to film herself engaged in self-mutilation. The scene looks like something out of a horror film but the film shifts gears, as she turns her camera towards secretly filming a predatory male director/producer as he moves in on a young actress, with a pretense of coaching her acting. The echos of Harvey Weinstein and his ilk are unmistakable, and this based-on-a-true story about a Me Too experience offers a harrowing journey with a gut-punch ending.

The fact that it is based on a true story adds power to director/writer Deborah Kampmeier’s taut drama TAPE, is a chilling drama for the MeToo era, with an actress tracking a predatory director’s moves on another young actress. “I would never want you to do anything that made you uncomfortable” is the prelude to “but if you want a career” pressure. It is a familiar theme in the era of Harvey Weinstein but watching it unfold step-by-step in this taut tale is more disturbing than one might expect.

Deborah Kampmeier is known for her feminist films, and while this one fits neatly into that group, it is also a rallying cry on a timely topic. Most powerfully, it is a step-by-step examination of how young women are lured into these kinds of destructive situations, by someone playing on ambition and skilled in manipulation.

Although the film was clearly shot on a shoestring budget, that fact does nothing to diminish its impact. The film’s edge-of-your-seat effect is largely thanks to following the subjects step-by-step descent into the trap, and the emotionally-jarring final sequence. That effect is greatly aided by fine acting by the trio of performers at its center.

Annarosa Mudd plays Rosa, the woman with the camera, who pierces her tongue, shaves her head and cuts her wrists in an homage to Shakespeare’s’ Lavinia, before setting up camera and strapping one to herself, as she stalks a young actress named Pearl. Rose seems unbalanced, obsessive, maybe jealous, until we gradually see what is really happening. Her searing performance and haunting screen presence grips us, so we cannot look away.

As Pearl, Isabelle Fuhrman wavers between self-assured and confident in her own values, and an ambitious performer driven to seize every opportunity. Pearl is also pursued by director/producer Lux (Tarek Bishara), with praise of her talent and offers to mentor her. As handsome, charming Lux, Bishara veers, in astonishingly convincing manner, between a charismatic mentor who seems only want to guide her to the full expression of her talent, and a selfish predator bent on his own seamy goals. Their dance along the knife edge of truth and deceit is truly harrowing to watch.

This is not an easy film to watch but it rewards the audience with its thought-provoking content. Even though the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed all other issues to the side for now, the issue of abuse of women in the entertainment and other industries has not gone away and will resurface again. This gripping drama gives compelling insights how a reasonable young woman might find herself drawn into this destructive situation.

TAPE begins streaming Friday, April 10, on Amazon, iTunes, GooglePlay and Microsoft.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 4 stars

LIZZIE – Review

Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny in LIZZIE. Photo credit: Eliza Morse. Courtesy of Saban Films and Roadside Attractions ©

Lizzie Borden and the gruesome murders of her parents remain in the public imagination, due in part to that memorable childhood rhyme about 40 whacks. Andrew and Abby Borden were found brutally murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts on August 4, 1892, when no one else was there except Lizzie and a servant girl. Yet Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders, partly because the jury just could not believe that such a well-brought up young lady from a respectable family could possibly have committed such a horrible crime.

Over the years, there have been lots of theories about what happened that day. LIZZIE is a psychological thriller that tells one possible version, one that delves into the family dynamics within the Borden family and the restrictive lives of women in that patriarchal era, particularly unmarried, respectable ones like Lizzie.

Chloe Sevigny plays Lizzie Borden, with Kristen Stewart as the Bordens’ young Irish servant girl Bridget. Making a film about Lizzie Borden has been a years-long passion of Sevigny, who grew up in New England, after she visited the Borden home and learned about the many mysteries and myths surrounding the murders. The film is directed by Craig William Macneill from a script by Bryce Kass, which had been commissioned by star and producer Chloe Sevigny.

LIZZIE is a moody, atmospheric film that focuses on what may have driven the well-brought up Lizzie Borden to such extremes, a told with a feminist bent. The Bordens were a prosperous, well-respected Massachusetts family. As expected for an unmarried woman of her era, Lizzie lived in the home where she grew up, with her stern father Andrew (Jamey Sheridan), her stepmother Abby (Fiona Shaw), and her also unmarried older sister Emma (Kim Dickens).

Andrew Borden was a very wealthy man but he was also frugal with his money, refusing to install electricity or even indoor plumbing in their house, although those amenities were common in the homes of people with their degree of wealth. While the family was well-respected in the community, Andrew Borden is more feared than loved, and had made many enemies.

Lizzie’s father was concerned about presenting the proper respectable public image to the community, and was strict, even controlling, towards his daughters. At 32, Lizzie was already considered an “old maid” and was expected, by the social rules of the time, in remain in her parents’ home and live there unobtrusively for the rest of her life. While her older sister accepted this fate, Lizzie chafed at the restraints placed on her as an unmarried woman, particularly for a socially prominent family like the Bordens. Lizzie had no money of her own, as women of her social standing did not work outside the home, and was dependent on her father.

Abby has never been close to either of her stepdaughters, as she tells their new maid. Feeling isolated, Lizzie forms a bond with the new maid Bridget, despite the differences in their social stations.

Sevigny delivers a tour-de-force performance that conveys the frustration at the suffocating circumstances under which Lizzie must live. Sevigny paints Lizzie as an intelligent, independent woman who is also a bit of an eccentric with a feminist bent ahead of her time.

The film focuses on the events leading up to the murders and the gruesome killings rather than the trial that followed. The friendship between Lizzie and Bridget grows into something more, something that had been rumored about the real Lizzie Borden. We frequently see Lizzie rebelling against her strict father Andrew, and her defiant behavior leads to talk of sending her to asylum, something completely within her father’s legal power. At the same time, we see her father making arrangements for his wealth and business matters to be handled by his brother-in-law John (Denis O’Hare), an oily social climber that Lizzie dislikes.

Fine acting and the strong cast are a major factor in making this film work. Kristen Stewart brings a depth to her often silent character, which acts as a sympathetic ear to the stressed and lonely Lizzie, and makes it believable that they could grow close.

Sevigny is the real creative force behind this film and she is well-cast as Lizzie Borden, bringing an intelligence and complexity to the character, and the sense of a woman suffocating under the restrictions of the era, her social position and her family.

Fine acting and the strong cast are a major factor in making this film work. Kristen Stewart brings a depth to her often-silent character, which acts as a sympathetic ear to the stressed and lonely Lizzie, and makes it believable that they could grow close. Jamey Sheridan’s natural warmth helps moderate Andrew Borden’s nasty behavior, suggesting an element of over-protectiveness towards his daughter although it does nothing to excuse his habit of foreclosing on properties. Fiona Shaw’s Abby Borden seems simply disconnected from her stepdaughters rather but Denis O’Hare brings a sinister cunning to his role as her brother John, raising questions about her motives.

All in all, the cast paints a more complex picture of the Borden family than we expect, as well as a surprisingly complicated Lizzie.

Photography by Noah Greenberg gives the film an unsettling sense of voyeurism as well as foreboding. Many scenes take place in the Borden home, where a spare and sparsely decorated space lends a feeling of claustrophobia despite the relative emptiness. As we follow Lizzie around the house, going through her daily routine, a sense of tension and oppressiveness builds. The cramped and cluttered space of the shed just outside the house seem free and relaxed, as well as hidden, by comparison.

The film focuses on psychological tensions and brooding mood, more than action and confrontation, which some audiences might find dull at times. Once we get to the murders, that shifts.

Sevigny and screenwriter Kass used trial testimony as inspiration to help capture Lizzie’s personality, transcripts that Sevigny felt revealed a forthright woman with a dry sense of humor, quite bold, even feminist, for her time. With little known about what actually happened the day of the murders, the filmmakers were forced to invent a plausible scenario, and the version they come up with is an intriguing one, the act of a woman with limited options and driven to extremes to escape an insufferable situation.

LIZZIE opens Friday, Sept. 21, at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema and the Tivoli Theater.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars