Maybe the most interesting complete disappointment I've ever seen. A cinematically outstanding fantasy set in Victorian England, where a mad professor has implanted the body of a suicide with the brain of her still-living fetus and raised her as his child in what seems at first like a very creative spin on "Frankenstein" but by the second act becomes preoccupied with her growing sexual desires and her manipulation by the men in her life, to the exclusion of all else.
For maybe the first half hour I thought it was an undiscovered gem—the cinematography, set design, and even costuming are like everything Terry Gilliam ever dreamed of, truly exceptional and surreal, and for the first half hour it had a plot to match. And then, she discovers masturbation, and suddenly, everything interesting about the plot was immediately dispensed with, and never returned to. The entire rest of the movie is about sexual dynamics. I'm sorry, that's just not a plot.
Incredibly disappointing.
Maybe, watch it with the sound off.
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