Dracula

The Velvet Absurdity of Luc Besson's Dracula

I genuinely did not think we needed another Dracula. Hard to blame anyone for feeling that way. Coppola already turned Bram Stoker into a lush Victorian fever dream, and Robert Eggers lately gave us enough gorgeous, plague-ridden dread to last a while. Transylvania did not seem short on tenants. Then Luc Besson showed up, and of course restraint was never going to enter the chat. *Dracula: A Love Tale* lands somewhere between earnest Gothic heartbreak and a two-hour commercial for outrageously expensive, probably illegal European cologne.



The setup borrows shamelessly from Coppola. Prince Vlad loses Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) during a Turkish siege in the 15th century, curses God, and spends the next four centuries hunting for her reincarnation. The difference is in the texture. Coppola gave this material shadows, rot, erotic menace. Besson gives it polished CGI and a glow so intense it practically wipes the fear away. *Dread Central* was dead on in saying the film’s glossy finish "drains them of tension," because so much of this world is simply too sleek to feel haunted. Early on, Caleb Landry Jones struts around in battle armor, and somebody has given him digitally sculpted CGI abs. That is an absurd decision for an actor whose actual physical presence—pale, twitchy, all nervous voltage—is already doing much more interesting work. It’s ridiculous. It also kind of makes you pay attention.



Mostly because Jones devours the film whole. After *Dogman*, he clearly understands how to ride Besson’s frequency without falling off. His Dracula isn’t a smooth seducer; he’s a grief-struck, deeply odd romantic with eternity on his hands. The movie’s most deranged sequence makes that plain. In 18th-century Europe, Dracula gets tired of searching for Elisabeta the slow way and creates a magical perfume that renders him irresistible to women. He douses himself in it, sweeps into a lavish ball, and instantly transforms a swarm of powdered aristocrats into vampire brides, sending them across the globe to help him search. The whole thing plays like Mel Brooks filtered through Baz Luhrmann. It makes no earthly sense. I was glued to it.



Christoph Waltz does sturdy work on the other side of all this lunacy. As "The Priest," Besson’s stand-in for Van Helsing, he tracks Dracula all the way into 19th-century Paris. Waltz has made such a career out of smiling menace that it’s almost soothing to watch him play a worn, unexpectedly compassionate servant of God. His Priest isn’t merely hunting a monster to destroy it; he seems to want Dracula to surrender, maybe even to be forgiven. Their final encounter barely qualifies as a fight. It’s more like a sad conversation that ends with Dracula, finally recognizing immortality as a curse he will not pass on to Mina, allowing the Priest to drive a metal stake through him. For a film with living stone gargoyles and mice drained by telekinesis, it’s an oddly tender finish. Peter Bradshaw of *The Guardian* called the whole thing "ridiculous but watchable," which feels exactly right. It’s overlong, messy, and emotionally scrambled, but at least there’s blood moving under all that velvet.