Dracula has been adapted so many times and so many different ways that new interpretations are not only inevitable but necessary. And it is possible to re-theme the story, which does involve the title character pursuing a specific woman, as a romance. Both the 1979 film by John Badham and the 1992 film by Francis Ford Coppola leaned into a theme of Mina Harker being the reincarnation of Dracula’s long-lost lover and casting his interests in her therefore as a human impulse of romantic reunion. It is a tenuous pretense to make work, the predatory nature of the Dracula character not something that translates easily to authentic notions of love -and to even attempt it one must be confident in their portrait of the vampire -resting in the aforementioned cases on the sexual charisma of a figure like Gary Oldman or especially Frank Langella.
Dracula, the 2025 French film going for an even greater scope of romantic melodrama, casts Caleb Landry Jones -a character actor known for his unsettling screen presence, who might make for a good more visually traditional iteration of Dracula (or indeed Nosferatu), though not one meant to be a tragic Byronic hero. He comes into the role courtesy of director Luc Besson -with whom he’s collaborated previously- and who drenches the film in that highly stylized, bombastic manner of his that feels on more than a few occasions wildly inappropriate for this narrative -certainly in terms of where it takes itself as a legitimately serious movie.
It notably spends more time on the history of Count Dracula, once again grafted onto Vlad the Impaler whose only real joy in life was his love of his wife Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu), killed during a battle with the Ottomans. He renounces God and murders a priest for this and begins his long life as a vampire, occasionally creating familiars whilst mostly spending the centuries looking for Elisabeta in another form -until the traditional events of the story are set in motion with Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) visiting his castle in Transylvania while a Priest in Paris (Christoph Waltz) -the film’s unidentified analogue Van Helsing- investigates his vampiric activity.
Indeed, the movie does glimpse some corners of this activity, largely through flashback in the story that Dracula tells Harker of his history after becoming a vampire -his life beforehand is shown at the start. But while we may see more, it doesn’t actually build on anything in the story. This is particularly felt with regards to the romance so central to the film’s narrative. Besson throws you into Vlad and Elisabeta’s relationship at the height of its affections and lusts -a montage of them merely frolicking and making love in his castle bedroom, including right up to the point he goes to war (they can barely keep their hands off each other as he’s being fitted for his armour, it’s quite absurd). Nothing is done to impress the power and nature of this relationship beyond these lovey-dovey aesthetics -Vlad is an incredibly thinly defined character and Elisabeta has no definition at all beyond her complete devotion to him. So little is made of their relationship that when Mina Murray turns up, obviously the reincarnated form of Elisabeta and starts mysteriously recalling her former life, it is the same limited series of moments that have to play out again and again in her mind. In re-inflaming that romance generations down the line there is even less convincing pull than was in the Coppola film.
The Coppola version is important because Besson is clearly a fan, to the point he adapts several details and aesthetics from that movie directly. Vlad’s flesh-like armour is very similar to what Oldman wore in the prologue of that film, the asylum of the Dr. Seward analogue, played by Guillaume de Tonquédec, has the same oval cells shot with the same techniques, and most notably Dracula in his aged form is a complete imitation of Oldman’s very distinct look through the first act of that movie. It might almost read as a deliberate parody in some respects.
However, one point of difference is that while Coppola incorporated a wide range of old-school special effects, Besson leans hard on highly conspicuous CGI, particularly where it isn't needed. It's notable in several of the backdrops, including a few establishing shots of Paris (perhaps the movie's most bewildering choice is moving the story's setting to Paris from London yet keeping in place all the English characters and their language). But most prominent are the crew of little gargoyle sidekicks at Dracula's castle -sexless stand-ins for the concubines of the book.
For a filmmaker as lascivious as Besson, this reads as a very odd choice, one of a few seemingly designed to emphasize Dracula's lack of infidelity to Elisabeta. Even the women he bites and who call him master don't have any sexual relationship to him -not that you would know though given how Besson illustrates their subservience. Indeed, his fetishistic attitude towards women does shine through very bluntly against any more respectable inclinations of the text. The movie doesn't feature any sex explicitly but its women are little more than sexual objects, framed by Besson's camera in entirely lustful contexts. Consider the prominent seduction plays of Maria (Matilda De Angelis) -a composite of both Lucy and Renfield- during her interrogation scene, involving lots of tongue flicking and bodily spasms over a pentagram. Then there is the addition of a spellbinding perfume that Dracula uses to lure women to him. We seem him petrify a bunch of ladies with it at a Versailles ball, where they practically give their necks over to his teeth, but it has nothing on a sequence later in which the decrepit Dracula to rejuvenate himself infiltrates a convent and dozens of nuns flock to him in a trance, crowding him like a harem as they lose their habits -their reactions to his bites positively orgasmic. It becomes a bizarre mountain of nuns, the sexualized editing and compositions reflecting some wild kinks on Besson's part.
What renders it dismal and even tasteless though is how it figures into the vaguely misogynist connotations of the film overall, which is felt nowhere more than in Mina, who has less agency than any version of the character in decades. In her best moments she is a lightly suspicious stooge, easily manipulated by Maria into meeting and being charmed by Dracula, and subsequently abandoning her life and identity upon confirmation of her reincarnated spirit. There has never been a Mina more eager to be taken by Dracula and there has never been a Dracula less deserving of it. Jones, it should be stated, is not very good in this -going for the moody, romantic vampire type, which he in his sickly pale demeanour and discomforting expressions is out of his depth to pull off -likewise having no middle ground between hammy and lethargic. And there's just something a little gross too about how Bleu is made to play Mina’s unwavering devotion, willing to sacrifice everything instantly for this creep she just met. That Besson chose not only the angle he did, but this particular way of presenting it... should not be surprising given his history (both on camera and off), but it is rather dreadful.
Waltz is a highlight though -despite the poor plotting he's put through in the last act- and the movie is way too strange to be dull. Often it is even fairly funny, albeit in I suspect not a wholly intentional way -such as in Dracula's repeated attempts to kill himself by falling out his open window or some of the incredibly awkward dialogue that speaks to somebody writing in English without understanding its nuances. Things like these are temporary entertainments only though. Luc Besson's Dracula is distinct, I'll give it that. But it is not a good movie. Whatever one might be able to make of a romantic version of Dracula, Besson chose every adverse turn. A Dracula movie that still comes off as creepy, but not in the appropriate way.
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