From Saudi director Haifaa al-Mansour (2012’s Wadjda), this biopic about the life of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley is, like her scientist’s creation, an odd, interesting, flawed beast. Daughter of leftwing literati William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (who died just weeks after giving birth to her), Elle Fanning’s Mary dreams of being “substantial”, which she defines as “anything that curdles the blood and quickens the beating of the heart”. Sent to Scotland at the age of 16, she meets the radical Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth, sadly lacking swagger) who conveniently forgets to tell her that he’s already married. Mary and Percy run away together, taking Mary’s hotheaded stepsister Claire Clairmont (Diary of a Teenage Girl’s Bel Powley) with them, and eventually fall in with the poet Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge).
The tone wavers somewhere between Gossip Girl and Jane Eyre, and while it feels stretched at two hours, its teen-movie digressions work well as opportunities to apply contemporary feminist critiques to the Romantics.
Fanning, reminiscent of a young Nicole Kidman, reveals small snatches of Mary’s wildness in a more natural performance than those of her co-stars, all of whom struggle with precious, overly expositional dialogue. Though the gothic costuming and period detail look beautiful, there’s a conservative stiffness to the film’s formal qualities that feels at odds with Mary’s progressive politics and tempestuous spirit.
