ThiefHott Too much of everything

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

TheLittleSongbird Bride of the Wind could have been great, it was an interesting subject and I love music-biographical dramas when they're good. Bride of the Wind was a big disappointment. Sure, it is beautifully shot and looks gorgeous from a colour and production value perspective. The music, mostly from Mahler, is every bit as wonderful, and Jonathan Pryce and particularly Vincent Perez are very good. Unfortunately Sarah Wynter's Alma is devoid of any sensuality, nuances or life, it's a complete blank of a performance that only succeeds in making Alma shallow and thoroughly unlikeable. Simon Verhoeven suffers from being completely under-utilised and underwritten so he can't do anything with his character, who is just there with no depth and nothing to make him distinguishable. But that is the case with all the characters actually, excepting perhaps Gustav Mahler, they are written with no substance- you can safely say that they are literally sketched over- and at no point do you engage with them. The script is completely lifeless and full to the brim with stilted dialogue, while the story is not just dull but too often steps through its content so after the film ended things happen but with hardly anything explaining them. There are also some ridiculously misconceived plot-strands, the one with Alma and Oskar being the main culprit. All in all, looks beautiful with two good performances and wonderful music, but shallow and dull that makes you hate Alma intensely. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Welcome to the life of Alma Mahler, literally enslaved by Gustav Mahler who did not realize it, but Alma could not cope with it, just submit and suffer. Then she had a passion for Walter Gropius with whom she will eventually marry but the passion will vanish as soon as the wedding will be consumed, or nearly. She will have some liaison with Oskar Kokoschka, before and after Gropius, but that will only lead to drama, even melodrama. Finally she will fall for Franz Werfel who did not come out of the drabness of the setting too much and more or less kept up with appearances. Alma Mahler may have had some potential but we will never know. She never really performed as a performer, a pianist it could have been, and it is not some seven or so songs published quite later that can tell us what she could have done in music if she had not been stifled by the fame of her husband and then the grandiose vision of her next two men. But the film does not show well enough how she was the real inspirer of Gustav Mahler, the woman who gave him the courage to renege his religion to capture the director's position at the Vienna opera. He will never survive this killing of not only his God, but of God altogether, and when he found out he had killed God he discovered in the wake of this realization that life was dead and that death had invaded life completely and that only the earth was left, the earth on which we tread before being buried in it. Earth the perpetual and eternal shroud. The death of their younger daughter, Maria, was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. He had to accept the call from the earth, from death and go into total darkness now the gate of light that does not cast a shadow was dead, had been killed along with God. That feeling of death, of absolute voidness and vacuum in the world, is so Jewish and yet so beyond Jewishness. That's probably what Alma could not stand up to, the constant contact with death that is so typical of Mahler's music. And now we have re-discovered the music of the Old testament, the Hebraic music codified and organized by King David, we can compare and we can discover its main accents are the same as some of the darkest music pieces Gustav Mahler composed. His wife was just fascinated by this morbidity she felt in the music and could not identify, and that fascination became a sense of duty after she had fallen into the snare and then, when the snare released her, she could never free herself from that call from the bottom of the grave of life itself. This particular film sets the emphasis on the fragile uncertainty of Alma's successive passions that lead to some kind of melodramatic approach and that does not satisfy my real curiosity and consciousness about this world in which Mahler committed the worst crime possible, to kill his own people's God. And God knows history was going to make his people pay for that assassination, which was not only Gustav Mahler's. Maybe it was a crime committed by a whole civilization and imposed in a cathartic way onto the Jews by this civilization turned materialistic.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Armand Alma Mahler is one of impressive legends of Mitteleuropa. To describe her life is an Utopian endeavor. Her power, art of seduction, fights and ambitions, her relationship with flower of Austrian culture, the American experience and his prestige are parts of unique existence without any explanation.In this film, Alma is only a character. Oversimplified, mosaic of clichés, image in a steamed mirror. It is only a hasty sketch, message less, artificial, in who the charm of Sarah Wynter is unique trap for spectator. It is not, at least, a cogent disappointed.The Jonathan Pryce acting is interesting but irrelevant. The atmosphere is only illusion of a gorgeous period. And the story falls in abyss. Alma Mahler is more that a beautiful doll. She is a magnificent legend of a amber time.

artzau I watched this bit of eye candy in the hope that the story of Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel would unfold and the world could see a portrait of a daring, talented woman who was indeed liberated in nearly every sense of the word. Mahler is one of one of my favorite composers and I became fascinated with Alma Schindler, believe it or not, from a parody sung by Tom Lehrer. However, since that time, many, many years ago, I've managed to read several excellent biographies of Mahler as well as Alma Schindler's autobiography, which leads me to comment on this film. Sadly, this film disappoints. It is a beautiful piece of work, with darkness wrought from bright colors, ala Bergman's Cries and Whispers, and with wonderful costumes. But, as the other reviews herein note, the script is weak and Sarah Wynter's performance is spotty. Indeed, the two male stars, Jonathon Pryce as Mahler and Vincent Perez as the artist, Oskar Kokoschka outshine Wynter's tentative characterization of Alma. Perez is especially bright, exuding passion and artistic madness, as biographer's have depicted the painter, a pioneer in early 20th Century expressionism. Peter Verhoeven as Gropius and Gregor Seberg as Werfel seem to get ground up and we're left wondering why they were written into the script...in spite of the fact, each played a significant role in the life of Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel. Too bad, they are underutilized. And, to continue slamming the script, they are badly depicted. Gropius, the great architectural innovator of the Bauhaus was hardly the foppish Mama's boy shown in the film. And, the passionate, multi-talented Franz Werfel, author of Song of Berndadette and Forty Days at Musa Dagh, was hardly the clowning caricature presented in the film. Even the solid performance of Welsh veteran Jonathon Pryce is led astray. The driven, passionate and often neurotic Mahler, compulsively washing his hands 12 times a day was not the staid, stoic older man shown in this film. So, alas, the great subject matter has been neglected. What results is not-a-bad movie about a fascinating woman that with a bit more research, better script, and a different leading lady could have been excellent, really excellent film.