Jessie Buckley plays two roles here. As the movie opens, we see her in black-and-white, dressed up in early 19th century garb—including a bit of droopy lace stuck to her hair—as she angrily decries her fate as a woman and an artist. She explains emphatically that she has yet another story to tell, and to get it out there, she’s going to seize control of a 20th-century woman—she calls this act “a possession,” a melding of two minds. Cut to 1930s-era Ida, also played by Buckley, who sits at a rowdy Chicago nightclub table in a shiny but clearly cheap salmon-orange satin dress, entertaining a couple of numbnuts low-level gangster types (they’re played by John Magaro and Matthew Maher, both underused, if not ill-used) who appear to be interested in everything about her except her mind. She plays along with them, but she’s always on the verge of snapping. Suddenly, she starts spouting nonsense invective in a rolling, quasi-historical English accent. That’s Mary Shelley, turning Ida into her own personal Charlie McCarthy. Shortly thereafter, Ida will meet a bad end and experience an even badder rebirth.