‘The Difficult Bride’ Review: Feminist Body Horror Meets Social Inequality in Rubaiyat Hossain’s Visceral Breakout Thriller

No amount of beauty treatments can disguise the disturbing transformation of an elite Bangladeshi bride-to-be when her body reacts to the life being thrust upon her.

By Jay Weissberg

Jay Weissberg

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It takes a bold director to combine body horror with Sylvia Plath, but then again Rubaiyat Hossain has never shied away from pushing the envelope. From her 2011 debut “Meherjaan,” widely attacked by conservative forces, to “Under Construction” and more recently “Made in Bangladesh,” the maverick director’s focus on gendered spaces and female sexuality have made her an outlier in Bangladeshi cinema. With “The Difficult Bride” — which premiered in Venice and is seeing a highly successful festival run, including competition slots in Tokyo and London — she’s finally got her international breakthrough, benefiting from the current popularity of feminist body horror films yet beholden to no one in her lusciously tactile handling of fabric and skin.

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