ALAN MOLONEY

MARY SHELLEY (2018)
Starring Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Bel Powley, Maisie Williams, Joanne Froggatt, Stephen Dillane, Tom Sturridge, Ben Hardy, Hugh O'Conor and Jack Hickey. Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour.

Mary is a rebellious and outspoken teenager. When she meets the poet Percy Shelley, there’s a spark of attraction between the two outsiders who feel trapped within polite society. When Mary’s family discover that Percy is married with a child, they forbid any further contact. Mary and Percy elope, taking Mary’s half-sister Claire along for the ride. It’s a scandal, and with Percy’s philandering ways, rumours of a ménage à trois are whispered everywhere they go. Claire willfully flirts her way into the affections of poet Lord Byron, and Mary is relieved when they are asked to join the decadent poet at his house in Lake Geneva.

During one stormy summer night, to distract Mary from Percy’s infidelities, Lord Byron suggests they all write a ghost story. All the pain and guilt that Mary feels about Percy, Claire and the child she lost, is poured into giving birth to Frankenstein’s Monster. The story is incredible, a classic that even Percy must acknowledge. But women don’t write books, and publishers certainly won’t print them. The rebel rises, and Mary fights for her creature and her identity, all at the age of eighteen.

REVIEWS Mary Shelley - A paint-by-numbers biopic