“I haven’t eaten in centuries,” says the stooped, wrinkled man knocking at a convent door, seeking food and shelter.
LOL! It’s a funny line, given that this is a disguised Count Dracula — who indeed has not eaten in centuries, unless you count human blood. And it’s especially funny given that Dracula is not now, nor has ever been, a comedy.
But the humor’s a nice touch, as are the splashes of color, the lovely 19th-century gowns, the rendering of Parisian salons and vivid street celebrations that are part of Luc Besson’s reimagining of the oft-told tale (more like the told-all-the-time tale), starring Caleb Landry Jones. And yes, the story of Dracula is not usually set in Paris. There’s a lot that’s familiar in this version, but enough variety, panache and bravado to raise it up a notch and give it, well, a raison d’etre.
Photo: AP
Writer-director Besson’s calling card is romance — the original title was Dracula: A Love Tale — and, maybe more to the point, sex. Unlike Robert Eggers’ 2024 Nosferatu, which was beautiful but bleak to look at and featured an ugly, fearsome vampire, Besson imbues his main character with a swashbuckling sexiness that suits his star’s craggy appeal.
Which is why, even when he’s aged four whole centuries, a pack of nuns at the convent can’t resist climbing all over Dracula, presenting their necks for the taking. He may be wrinkled, but he’s wearing a homemade scent they can’t resist — no women can, even nuns.
But we begin back in the year 1480, in a remote castle, where a handsome prince — Vlad’s his name, for now — is frolicking in the bedroom with beautiful bride Elisabeta (Zoe Bleu). Their playtime is stopped suddenly by Vlad’s men: War is at hand, and it’s time to fight.
Vlad’s main concern is his wife. He asks the Orthodox priest to swear that God will protect the life of Elisabeta — after all, they’re fighting in God’s name. Alas, escaping through the forest in the snow, Elisabeta is killed in an ambush. A grief-stricken Vlad returns to kill the priest with his cross, renounce God, damn heaven — and is thus cursed with immortal life. A life he will spend trying to find his wife, reincarnated.
Four hundred years later, Vlad, now Count Dracula, resides — shriveled but stylish, with an incredible flowing, white wig that looks like something Elvis might have worn if he were a 400-year-old vampire — in the Carpathian Mountains. But the action shifts to Paris, mainly just because Besson loves Paris, where citizens are joyously celebrating the centenary of the French Revolution.
Paris is also where we meet a prominent vampire-hunter from Bavaria — and unnamed priest — played by Christoph Waltz, who you might imagine is perfect for this role. Like Javert hunting Valjean in Les Miserables, this priest is determined to find his prey, wherever that takes him.
And Dracula’s on his own mission. In his gloomy castle, where he lives with a gaggle of CGI gargoyles, he prepares to kill a young solicitor (Ewens Abid) who came to see him about his property, hanging him upside down until the blood pools in his head.
But then he sees a picture of the frightened young man’s intended, Mina, and becomes obsessed with finding her, certain she’s his reincarnated bride. He spares the man’s life and heads to Paris.
The scenes in the French capital are full of welcome color and life — everything from receptions in salons or at Versailles to a street carnival to a mermaid swimming in an aquarium — all chances to display sumptuous costumes by Corinne Bruand.
When, aided by one of his vampire followers, Maria (Matilda De Angelis), Dracula finds Mina — also played by Bleu (the real-life daughter of Rosanna Arquette) — he immediately knows she’s his eternal love. Now, all he needs to do is win her heart, and get back to Transylvania to escape the vampire hunters. Luckily for him, he’s looking good — those nuns at the convent gave him all the fresh blood he needed to look young and handsome again.
There are plenty of Bessonian flourishes along the way — those gargoyles sure are weird, and they don’t remain gargoyles — but in the end, it’s too bad there weren’t even more, to further distinguish this Dracula telling from many before it. In any case it all leads to a fairly satisfying confrontation between Dracula and the priest, saved until the very end, a la Pacino and De Niro in Heat.
Here, it’s fun to watch Jones and Waltz sink their teeth — well for Jones, his fangs — into a story that’s old as time, but can always use another fairly watchable remake.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
Last month, media outlets including the BBC World Service and Bloomberg reported that China’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently flat or falling, and that the economic giant appears to be on course to comfortably meet Beijing’s stated goal that total emissions will peak no later than 2030. China is by far and away the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, generating more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. As the BBC pointed out in their Feb. 12 report, “what happens in China literally could change the world’s weather.” Any drop in total emissions is good news, of course. By
RSS