Boning up on Mahler

>> One woman does the intelligentsia in Bride of the Wind

by MATTHEW HAYS

"Every generation has its muse," reads the opening line of the press kit for Bruce Beresford's latest film, Bride of the Wind. "In ancient Greece, there was Helen of Troy. In the Middle Ages, there was the Mona Lisa. And in turn of the century Vienna, there was Alma: a brilliant, sexy young musician who aroused the passions of Europe's greatest artists."

Such a great premise for a movie! In a nutshell, this woman was a dish (apparently much like Sarah Wynter, the actress playing her) who managed to climb in and out of bed with all sorts of turn-of-the-century intelligentsia. Really, this film works like some kind of Euro-Hollywood Squares--as well as composer Gustav Mahler (Jonathan Pryce), there was Gustav Klimt, artist Oskar Kokoschka (Vincent Perez), architect Walter Gropius and novelist Franz Werfel. (Sussing out these folks, I'd bet the entertaining, if a bit loopy, Kokoschka would probably snag the centre Square.)

So much boning, so much brain power, where could this go wrong? Unfortunately, the boning here just adds up to a bone-dry movie. There's no punch, no spice, no thrills, none of the stuff a film like this needs to grab an audience. As far as Beresford's oeuvre goes, a feature that fails to deliver isn't so surprising, seeing as he has one of the most erratic track records for a director--ever (witness the sublime Breaker Morant, the treacly Driving Miss Daisy and the disastrous Double Jeopardy).

This is a quasi-feminist movie in that sub-genre that takes famous historical figures and revisits them with a feminist-spin screenplay. Think Jodie Foster in the overblown Anna and the King, or Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly. Bride of the Wind argues that dear Mrs. Mahler was in fact Ms. Mahler, the original do-me feminist who launched a thousand works of art, books etc. and that she gave up many of her own highfalutin' aspirations because of the sexist constraints of her day. But if we are to buy that she was, indeed, no ordinary ho, we're going to need a film that's far less ordinary than this one.

Bride of the Wind opens Friday, June 22