The Robber Bride

Margaret Atwood novels have not fared well as movies because she is far more interested in ideas than stories. The Handmaid's Tale had such powerful ideas it wasn't surprising the movie version disappointed. I'm not sure if Atwood was trying to write a comic novel when she wrote Robber Bride or trying to get as close as she could to a mystery novel. As with so many of her efforts, she wasn't successful at either, but the quality of her work makes reading her worthwhile anyway. CBC was pretty daring even to try to turn the novel into a TV movie. They chose the easy way out and turned it into a comic thriller. It works as well as other comic thrillers, better than the recent CTV adaptations of detective novels. It is the acting by Mary-Louise Parker, Amanda Root and others which earned it an above-average rating for me. Maybe with more money they could have turned it into a good cinema film.

I found myself comparing this to another psychological thriller I had seen recently - CACHE aka HIDDEN - much to the disadvantage of THE ROBBER BRIDE.

The film begins with a scene that makes the viewer expect an investigation a la CSI. Instead it is a single individual investigating a team of trio of women for the possible murder of a woman they all knew in their university years. John's character and personality seems to disappear as we learn more about Zenia the possible woman and the women, Charis, Roz and Tony.

None of the latter women engendered any of my sympathy, though the story argues (or does it?) that all three have been victimized by Zenia, who unerringly detects how best and how deeply the three can be hurt.

I found the choice of Mary-Louise Parker interesting in that she resembled a younger, more feminine Margaret Atwood.

I imagine that I missed a considerable amount of subtext because I have not read much Atwood, and as this is a fairly recent work, it very likely reiterates themes that she finds important.

I edited the commercials out of the film, and was left with slightly less than 89 minutes; so I must applaud those who sat through the live broadcast of THE ROBBER BRIDE, often enduring lengthy 4 minute or longer commercial - I found it incredibly annoying to fight off the numerous pop ups, usually for forthcoming programming, to the extent that I couldn't read or digest the all important closing credits!

The first thought that came into this viewer's mind was to question Ms. Parker on her choice of vehicles. After having seen her in the New York stage in the brilliant "Dead Man Cell Phone", one can't only guess it was a project that looked good in the written page and it turned out to be a different thing when it started shooting.

Granted, Margaret Atwood's novel is not exactly the easiest thing to adapt for the big screen, or even television, as it's the case with this ill conceived idea. Our only suggestion to this talented actress is to stay in New York where she seems to have a knack for choosing plays in which to shine, as she has proved with "How I Learned to Drive" and "Proof", just to mention two other plays in which she shone.

While this is not a horrible film, by any means, the people behind it seem to have not get the essence of Ms. Atwood's work by the way it's presented. Better luck next time.

A finger is found along with a bloody abandoned car. The victim is believed to be journalist Zenia Arden (Mary-Louise Parker). Police detective Henry Kelly fears being implicated in her murder as her secret source and love interest. He recruits ex-cop John Grismer (Shawn Doyle) to investigate. As Henry gets arrested for the murder, John finds that she had many enemies including her former boss Roz Andrews. She was staying with Charis White on Toronto Island and takes an interest in her daughter Augusta (Tatiana Maslany).

This is adapted from the Margaret Atwood novel. I don't know much about the book. The first half is structured like a traditional police procedural. The investigation is essentially interviewing one character after another with one flashback after another and non of them can be relied upon. The twist in the middle is not surprising. I kept thinking that Henry is a cop in prison and every second counts. I never trusted Arden for one second which makes any backstabbing rather expected. It's obvious that he should have brought her to various security cameras so that the police would be able to check even if she runs away. The whole blood sample and notary preparation is unnecessary. None of these characters can be trusted and I'm not shocked at any possible resolution.

I don't know what Margaret Atwood was thinking to allow this movie to have the same name as her book. I've always been a big fan of The Robber Bride and was so excited to learn there was a movie in the works. I am aware that the translation of book to movie isn't perfect but this movie was the worst ever. The names of the women are correct and some of the back story is correct but that is about it. I feel like I lost a good portion of my time trying to make it through this movie. This really should have been a mini-series to tell the story the way it was written.

The actors for Roz, Tony, Charis and Zenia were well-chosen even though I was skeptical at first about Mary-Louise Parker. I only wish they'd had a better script to work with because this really had nothing to do with the book at all.