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Mary Shelley
With her second feature film, Mary Shelley, groundbreaking Saudi filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda) tells us the story of author Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Elle Fanning) - author of one of the world’s most famous Gothic novels ‘Frankenstein’ - and her fiery, tempestuous relationship with renowned romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth). The pair are two outsiders constrained by polite society but bound together by a natural chemistry and progressive ideas that are beyond the boundaries of their age and time. Mary and Percy declare their love for each other and much to her family's horror they run away together, joined by Mary's half-sister Claire (Bel Powley.) In the midst of growing tension within their relationship during their stay at Lord Byron's (Tom Sturridge) house at Lake Geneva, the idea of Frankenstein is conceived when a challenge is put to all houseguests to write a ghost story. An incredible character is created, which will loom large in popular culture for centuries to come, but society at the time puts little value in female authors. At the tender age of 18, Mary is forced to challenge these preconceptions, to protect her work and to forge her own identity.
Press
"A rarity…plausible and moving, at once a defense of genre fiction and of female creativity...it sharpens the sense of Shelley’s modernity." - New York Times
"The director and her star make their point under the metriculously appointed cover of the film's 18th-century setting, but they make it plainly, cleanly, and with fire." - The Boston Globe
"The ethereal Fanning is excellent as always as the flushed, then fierce, Mary." - The Los Angeles Times
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