France's Luc Besson resurrects new 'romantic' Dracula
Titled "Dracula: A Love Story" and based on a relatively minor plotline in the original Bram Stoker book, the 66-year-old director puts Dracula's search for the reincarnation of his late wife at the heart of his story.
"I'm not a fan of horror films, nor of Dracula," Besson told Le Parisien newspaper about his production, which straddles several centuries in the life of the immortal blood-sucking count.
It was sparked by discussions with Landry Jones, the star of "X-Men: First Class", whom Besson directed in his last film, 2023's "Dogman".
"I'd love to do all my films with him. He's a genius," Besson told RMC radio in France this week of the 35-year-old Texas-born actor.
Releasing first in France on Wednesday and then in other European and South American countries over the next month, the film is the biggest-budget French film of the year, according to media reports.
Besson's career and personal finances took a major blow in 2017 with his hugely expensive flop "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets", which cost an estimated $180 million and had an A-list cast that included Rihanna.
The year after, the man behind the popular thrillers "Leon" and "Nikita" faced rape allegations from the Dutch actress Sand van Roy, which he always denied.
The case was dropped without charges after a legal battle that went all the way to France's top court in 2023.
Initial reviews for Besson's "Dracula" are mixed, with Paris Match magazine calling it the "best horror film of the summer" while Le Figaro newspaper said it "unfortunately failed to bring fresh blood to the vampire myth."
The original 1897 book has been adapted over a hundred times to the silver screen, with the two modern classics considered to be the 1958 version by British director Terence Fisher and a 1992 production by Francis Ford Coppola.
Another Gothic literary masterpiece, "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, is to get another overhaul later this year in a big-budget Netflix-funded production by Guillermo del Toro which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
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Film of the Week: Luc Besson's ‘Dracula: A Love Tale' - Fangtastic?
Mere months after Robert Eggers returned vampires to their Gothic roots with Nosferatu, his stylish exhumation of F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent German Expressionist classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, it's now Luc Besson's turn to sharpen his fangs. "I'm not a fan of horror films," the French filmmaker recently told Le Parisien newspaper about his take, Dracula: A Love Tale, which straddles several centuries in the life of the immortal and cinematically ubiquitous blood-sucking count. "Nor of Dracula." Ah. That doesn't bode well, does it? Or maybe it's exactly what we didn't know we needed. Based on the original book by Bram Stoker, Besson focuses on Dracula's search for the reincarnation of his late wife. He kicks things off in Romania, 1480. Pillow fights, food fights, plenty of steamy sex... Prince Vladimir the Second (Caleb Landry Jones) and Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) are two fusional lovebirds who are passionately into each other. Vlad gets called to war and after a rushed and poorly filmed fight sequence, he accidentally kebabs his beloved in a snowy field of wolf traps. He was trying to save her from an attacker, you see. Not trying to spice things up further. 'Tell God to send her back to me,' he pleads to the priest, who he promptly impales for failing to send the message in a timely manner to the Almighty. Renouncing God on the spot, Vlad is cursed, condemned to wander the centuries. 400 years later, in Paris, Christoph Waltz (a nameless man of the clergy referred to as 'Priest' but may as well be Professor Abraham Van Helsing) is called upon for a delicate case, featuring Maria (Matilda De Angelis). Her apparent sexual appetite is initially dismissed as hysteria by French doctors. However, he quickly deduces that she's a vampire, turned by her 'master' who is on the hunt for the reincarnation of his beloved. 'Sometimes pure souls can be reincarnated'. Not sure how 'pure' considering the religious morals of the time - not to mention the copious amount of fornication and food waste in the film's first act - but we make do. Before you know it, the damned and inconsolable prince, now a reclusive in his gloomy chateau populated with GCI gargoyles that may as well be Minimoy rejects, gets a lifeline. The escaped Maria may have found his princess... Her name is Mina (Bleu again), and she could be the reincarnation of his dead wife. Now looking like a boiled testicle, Vlad rejuvinates himself with some human Claret and sets out to win her over. But if he's condemned to eternal life, and therefore eternal suffering, that's not the sort of divine punishment one easily shakes off... A lovelorn incarnation of the famous vampire isn't as new as Besson seems to think it is. After all, Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula was billed as a love story, and since then, romantic devotion has always been a driving force in Bram Stoker adaptations. Indeed, this story has always been about a cursed man waiting hundreds of years to see again the only woman he has ever loved. It has always been the ultimate love story. Still, Besson colon-and-bills it 'A Love Tale' and... It's a royal mess. But a damn entertaining royal mess. Incapable of injecting tension or drawing out the horror from the story, Besson chooses to tell the tale of doomed love through the lens of a heightened fairytale. The director throws everything he has at it: tragedy, action, OTT melodrama, Danny Elfman's comically grandiose score, sexy magical elixirs, a Guillermo del Toro-esque carnival sequence, and a surprising amount of comedy. Yes, Dracula: A Love Tale is funny. Not Dracula: Dead And Loving It funny; rather, a film excelling at cartoonish and overripe comedy through committed performances by Landry Jones and his channelling of his inner Gary Oldman, the always terrific Waltz (whose delivery of the line 'She's alive. Clinically speaking' is fangtastic), and stealth MVP Matilda De Angelis. There is the niggling sense that the humour in this tonal hodgepodge is completely accidental, but it still lands. And the biggest joke of all is that this version is missing Gothic horror. Blasphemy for purists – and understandably so. For a film about the most notorious and celebrated Gothic figure in literature, a noticeable dearth of Gothic horror feels like heresy. However, in failing to create a serious meditation on love and salvation versus damnation, Besson may have inadvertently crafted a camp romp with Dracula: A Love Tale. Especially when considering the hilariously abrupt ending which has Waltz's Priest coming out of Vlad's castle and casually declaring: 'The spell is broken, everything is fine now.' CUT TO BLACK. TITLE CARD. THE END. Comedy gold. Intentional or no. So, while Dracula: A Love Tale doesn't inject too much fresh blood into the vampire myth, what it does is special. Egger's meticulous-to-a-mannered-fault approach may have been stunning, but Nosferatu ran the risk of alienating pre-existing fans yearning for less familiarity. When it comes to Besson, he risks alienating viewers for MANY other reasons. But get on his wavelength and again, accidentally or no, this may be the fated-to-be-hated high camp masterpiece of 2025. Alive and loving it. Dracula: A Love Tale is out in French cinemas now. It hits theatres in South America this month and is scheduled for release in other European territories like Greece, Germany, Italy and Spain in October.
