"Bride of the Wind," I am very, very sorry to say, is the "Heaven's Gate,"
no, the "Pearl Harbor" of the artist-biography genre.  A few days ago, I
called attention to "Bride," when I heard the soundtrack (which I still
recommend).  Now that I saw the film, I am engulfed by surprise and
disappointment.  Incidentally, there is very little of the soundtrack CD
that survived the editing in the film.

Even as an eyewitness, I can't quite believe that Bruce Beresford would
produce something so lame, slow, shapeless, laughable, and respectfully
lifeless.  We are told that Mahler (Jonathan Pryce) was a great composer
and Gropius (Simon Verhoeven) "changed the face of Vienna" and there are
frames of explanation projected at the end of the film about who was what
and why you should know about them.  World War I is a matter of a passing
remark between two women about lacking men and a good variety of pastry,
then the clumsily shot battlefield death of Kokoschka (Vincent Perez), and
we move on.  Slowly.

Meant to be a biography of Alma Mahler, the film entrusts the title role
to Sarah Wynter, a Jennifer Lopez look-alike with an Australian-German
accent, in a world of varied, inconsistent, confusing accents.  Was this
the brilliant woman who captivated some of the greatest artists of the
period? Couldn't be, even if she showed the J.Lo midriff; she shows quite
a lot more, but I still don't know what the film-makers were thinking.

Instead of "Bride," I recommend a tape of one of Beresford's early movies
(NOT "Black Robe" or "Paradise Road"), perhaps "Breaker Morant." Now there
was a film that told a story, and did that well.  That's not too much to
ask, is it? Especially from a director lucky enough to get Michael Caine
and Michael Gambon for his next project, "Boswell for the Defense." And
maybe the budget for that will allow him to hire a writer, instead of
Marilyn Levy, who wrote the screenplay for "Bride," including a plethora
of "unmusical" lines, lacking an ear for dialogue between real people.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
[log in to unmask]