Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Second Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series - Movie #7: Nadja

Well, ... that was weird.  Nadja is an arthouse vampire flick, filmed in black and white with some truly striking shots interspersed with fuzzy-focused vampire-vision scenes.  A post-modern revisiting of Dracula, this strange little movie has Romanian twin siblings Nadja (definitely a vampire) and Edgar (maybe a vampire) Dracul trying to come to terms with their lives in the wake of their despised father's death in 1990s New York City.  Edgar is in love with Cassandra, his caretaker, and living the reclusive invalid's life in Brooklyn, while Nadja, her enthralled young Irish Renfield doting on her every whim, tries to find meaning by going on dates and dancing in clubs and picking up Lucy, a depressed young woman currently estranged from her husband Jim.  Oh, and Jim's paranoid uncle, the one and only Van Helsing (a tripped-out Peter Fonda) is trying to kill the Dracul twins, just like he killed their father.

Nadja is not for everyone.  I'm not sure it was for me as it is abstract and moody, very slow-paced, dreamy in spots, with lots of talking about the emptiness of life (although there is a fair amount of black humor too) and only a little soft-focus vampire violence.  But for folks who prefer their vampire films sleek and stylish with a side of weird - the movie was produced by David Lynch, who has a cameo as a morgue guard - Nadja is perfect.

Next in line: Quarantine - we'll see how the American remake holds up.

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