A balletic version of the classic vampire story, Count Dracula (Zhang Wei-Qiang) attempts to seduce Mina (Cindy Marie Small) & Lucy (Tara Birtwhistle) and bring his foreign ways into Britain, but vampire hunter Van Helsing (Dave Moroni) and his band of upper-class young men oppose both his plans.
Quick Review: This is a ballet. People dance. They do not speak. So, if you can’t stand ballets, skip this.
Dracula is a perfect subject for a ballet. The story has always worked best, and escaped its troubling Victorian morality, when seen as a series of moving paintings. Add music and a bit more style, and you have ballet.
Not so much the themes in Dracula, but the background assumptions (upper-class people are fundamentally better, sex and pleasure are immoral, foreigners are a corruption that must be kept away) make it a poor story. But in Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, Guy Maddin recognizes that, and while not changing the story, changes the meaning. Dracula is not a source of evil, but a source of change and foreign influence, and the conservative Van Helsing cannot allow such changes to his world. While shot in black and white, money is tinted, highlighting its prominence and the fears of society. Blood is also tinted.
A good film; it could have been better. Maddin, carried away with his clever silent-era-look often obscures the dancers’ movements. Additionally, he underplays the sensuality of dance, retreating from what could have, and should have, been the most erotic vampire film made.