I mostly bought into this modern remake of Dracula, with all its unique charm. It’s dark and funny and beautifully filmed. Elina Löwensohn plays Nadja (Dracula’s daughter) struggling with her relationships with her brother and her new lover, while trying to carve out her own identity free from her father. (It’s much more interesting than it sounds, believe me.) Actress/novelist Galaxy Craze is captivating in her androgynous and understated portrayal of Lucy. David Lynch has a cameo appearance as a morgue clerk. And the whole movie is full of quirky little moments and odd, yet believable, snippets of dialogue.
The film is shot in beautiful black and white. There are lots of wonderful scenes that take advantage of this choice, but my favorite has to be the brief shot right after Van Helsing warns that Dracula could rise again from the grave. The camera cuts away to a lit and growing “snake” — that harmless fireworks toy that we loved as kids. The foaming ash writhes and grows just as we imagine Dracula will if he ever gets another chance to walk among us. This dead/alive snake metaphor for vampires was wonderfully original and really stuck with me. It’s amazing that there are any artistic twists left in such an old genre like vampire movies, but writer/director Michael Almereyda hit on a brilliant one.
At times, though, the movie seemed a little flat, mostly due to Peter Fonda’s stilted rendition of Van Helsing. His acting was wooden and slow, but in a way, I suppose, this too added to the fun. The real flaw of Nadja is that I tried to watch it over three late nights while fighting with a failing DVD player AND a bad copy from Netflix. After the third failed try to finish the movie, I popped it back in its mailing sheath without ever seeing the last 20 minutes or having followed the narrative closely enough to think about the bigger themes of the movie. See you next time at the top of the queue, Nadja.
3 Mulligans 