Haifaa al-Mansour impressed with Wadjda back in 2012, the first full-length feature from Saudi Arabia made by a female director. Now with Mary Shelley she is far afield from her novice effort but must be commended for expanding her horizons.

Mary Shelley of course is best known for her first novel, Frankenstein, published in 1818, which she began writing--amazingly--when she was 19 years old! She was also the wife of the famed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Al-Mansour's biopic stars Elle Fanning as Mary, with a decided modern feminist slant. It's a sumptuous period piece, replete with beautiful costumes and impressive recreation of the time period.

The film manages to touch all the bases of Mary Shelley's fascinating but troubled biography including her estrangement from her free thinking publisher and political philosopher father William Godwin, her elopement with Percy accompanied by her step-sister Claire, Percy's financial troubles and their escape to Geneva where they visit Lord Byron, Mary's interest in "galvanism" and the inspiration for Frankenstein, Claire's failed fling with Byron and the eventual anonymous publication of Frankenstein back in London.

Unfortunately, despite its seeming verisimilitude, the core of screenwriter Emma Jensen's narrative is false. In Jensen's view, Frankenstein was written in response to Percy Shelley's emotionally abusive, narcissistic behavior toward Mary.

There's quite a bit of ample documentation covering Mary Shelley's life including journals that she kept. She made it clear that her relationship with Percy was collaborative and that they were intellectual equals. This included interest in the scientific topics of the time which inspired the premise of Frankenstein, in which a scientist creates a creature out of dead body parts, animated by an electric current.

Here Percy becomes comparable to Frankenstein's embittered monster. He's falsely held responsible for the death of Mary's daughter Clara by fleeing from creditors during one stormy night, exposing the child to the elements; and later he abandons Mary for months (but in real life, remained with her until his death). There's additional sensational and gossipy speculation: he's a drunk, steals credit for her novel, allegedly has an affair with Claire and a possible bisexual relationship with Byron.

Mary is presented as some kind of feminist superwoman, knocking out Frankenstein in one sitting and then finding the publisher herself without any assistance from anyone (in reality, Percy found the publisher for the novel and it took Mary months to write it, with a multitude of literary influences!). Just taking a look at the original Frankenstein manuscript, you can see Mary was assisted by Percy, whose editing and suggestions appear in the blank side of the left column on each page.

At film's end, in his "confession" at the bookshop, al-Monsour and Jensen have Percy ludicrously state he was responsible for Mary's "loneliness." Of course the apology never occurred. In reality, Mary was devastated by Percy's early death at the age of 29 in a boating accident and ended up holding him in the highest regard until the end of her days.

As a basic primer, al-Monsour presents an elementary school introduction to the life of Mary Shelley. In her zeal to present an anachronistic feminist portrait, the true history is lost. Her film impresses as a beautiful visual recreation coupled with good acting, but ultimately proves to represent a betrayal of and disservice to history.

Mary Shelley: This film is a tad confused as it tries to fit so much into a 2 hour running time. There is the romance between Percy Shelley (Douglas Booth) and Mary Wollstonecraft (Elle Fanning); her freethinking father William Godwin (Stephen Dillane); her deceased mother Mary Wollstonecraft the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the affair between Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont (Bel Powley) and Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge); then there is the tale of the Swiss villa where the Frankenstein story was conceived. Mary even has a nasty stepmother (Joanne Froggatt).

Booth and Fanning both look exceedingly pretty and it's certainly lust if not love at first sight but somehow there are no real sparks in the relationship. Shelley is a cad who has deserted his wife and child and now hopes to have free love with Mary and more on the side. The real fire rages between Powley and Sturridge even if his Byron portrayal is somewhat reminiscent of Jason Isaacs plying Zhukov. The Swiss scenes where Frankenstein was thought up are surprisingly low key with Polidori (Ben Hardy) providing the main interest.

This might have worked better as a six hour TV mini-series. 6/10.

MARY SHELLEY is another would-be worthy biopic of a famous person, but one which fails to connect in the same way as the best of those in this genre, namely the likes of THE IMITATION GAME, CREATION and AMAZING GRACE. Elle Fanning is a serious piece of miscasting in the titular role, playing the famous author as vapid and rather senseless; her co-stars are better, even though some of them seem to be there for token name value alone (Maisie Williams, I'm looking at you). The movie is directed by someone with little affinity for the material and written by someone with a heavy hand, determined to spread her proto-feminism message while at the same time neglecting some of the basics of a historical film, namely realism and fully-fledged characterisation.