Mary Reilly (1996) is a gothic drama directed by Stephen Frears, centered around Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts), a young housemaid in Victorian London who works for the enigmatic Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich). As she becomes increasingly drawn to her mysterious employer, Mary begins to uncover dark secrets about the monstrous Mr. Hyde who has taken up residence inside Dr. Jekyll’s mansion. The film explores themes of innocence, repression, and the nature of good and evil, as Mary becomes entangled in a dangerous web of manipulation and deceit. The film is a reimagining of the classic Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, told from the perspective of the maid who is caught in the crossfire of Jekyll’s descent into madness, and it seems to have gotten thoroughly panned when it came out, failing at the box office pretty spectacularly.
With these sorts of films, however, time seems to mellow the harshness of their first judgment and in recent years, Reilly has been praised for being a dark satire of man’s duality, with Frears often singled out as masterfully controlling the horror unfolding around Mary as she begins to lose her own grip on self-control in the thrall of Jekyll/Hyde. Popular sentiment has even come around to acknowledging Julia Roberts’ restrained performance as Mary, something which garnered her a Razzie nomination following the film’s release in 1996. It’s pretty evident that 1996 was expecting Frears and his cohort of top talent to produce a film closer in keeping with his 1988 masterpiece Dangerous Liaisons, and on the surface, the two films are superficially complete opposites. Public opinion is never exactly known for appreciating the deeper subtlety at play, however, but it doesn’t take a lot of deep thinking to understand that both Liaisons and Reilly deal with human cruelty and exploitation of weakness, whether its sexual, social, or physical.
In that regard, I enjoyed Mary Reilly for playing around in the shadows of the human mind and I thought that the costumes by Consolata Boyle helped reinforce the rigidity projected outwardly by nearly all the characters (even the unhinged Mr. Hyde) while making it clear that the dark fantasies were barely kept in check. Dark colors with splashes of blood red abound, from the slash of garish anachronistic red of Mrs. Farraday’s lipstick (played with juicy enjoyment by Frears’ alum Glenn Close, who has never met a camp role she didn’t absolutely dive head first into), to the shocking tumble of red curls barely kept in check under Mary Reilly’s prim white cap. Boyle’s designs for the characters underscore each one’s diverse array of personal traumas, held together by a tightly fitted waistcoat or a heavily boned corset.
Have you seen Mary Reilly (1996)? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
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I remember finding this movie really slow and boring and Julia Robert’s accent annoying when it came out, and I don’t remember Glen Close at all. However, because of this post, I will try and watch it again.
I find Roberts as boring as I do Knightley, but that is one wonderful apron.
I saw this when it came out and found it boring, slow and hard to watch because it was filmed in such a dark manner. One can barely see what is happening in this dark moras. Robert’s accent was so off and, honestly, I’m not a John Malkovich fan at all. But don’t let this stop you for watching this film if you are so inclined.
I was intrigued by the performances. Even so, like everyone else, I found it a bit boring.
Having seen this film only once, I suspect my key reservation is the casting of Mr Malkovich as Doctor Jekyll more than the casting of Ms. Roberts – Mr Malkovich is a quality actor, but it’s hard to look at him and not see Mr Hyde even when playing the Good Doctor (Whilst playing the classic dichotomy fairly straight, rather than toying with questions of how different the Doctor was from his diabolical alter ego to start with).
Or, put another way, it’s easy to buy Mr Malkovich as Mr Hyde, harder to accept him as Doctor Jekyll (I was amused to learn recently that the proper Scots pronunciation of that surname is apparently “Jeek-l” not “Jeck-l”).
Personally, I’d have cast Toni Collette as Mary instead of Julia Roberts.
It was Mary’s mother that died, not her father, unfortunately.
This film definitely has flaws, but on the whole, I enjoyed the story, if not some of the elements, which felt a bit cartoonish. Note, this film is actually based on a novel of the same name by Valerie Martin. I read the book a couple of years before this film came out, and it’s definitely better than the film. The movie doesn’t veer too wildly away from the plot of the novel, but there’s definitely more to sink your teeth into in the book.