agnetic beauty that she is, Lucy Westenra (Birtwhistle) has many suitors. She's even caught the attention of one of her paramour's patients, a bug-eating bedlamite named Renfield, who raves to her about the arrival in England of his "master." As certain as the grave, this master, Count Dracula (Wei-Qiang), does arrive—from a mysterious eastern land and under a cover of darkness and mystery. Soon enough, the cryptic figure finds his way to Lucy's bedroom and seduces her, but Dracula's not looking merely to make love to this innocent belle—he wants nothing less than to suck the blood from her body with his ghoulish fangs.
When Lucy starts acting strangely, those who love her call on Dr. Van Helsing (Moroni), an intimidating and learned man who has experience treating certain diseases of the blood. After some terribly probing examination, it takes Van Helsing little time to form his prognosis—Lucy has been entranced and defiled by a creature of the undead, a vampire.
Once the enslaved Lucy disappears from her home, Van Helsing deputizes her suitors and goes after the count, who has since turned his sights on Mina (Small), Lucy's cousin. But Mina is actually in Dracula's homeland, waiting in a convent for her fiancé, Jonathan Harker (Wright), who has been staying at the Count's castle, hired to negotiate Dracula's trip to England. Harker's been seeing things so haunting at Dracula's home, however, that they threaten to undo both him and his engagement. Will either survive? Will the vampire be stopped? Will Mina remain unbesmirched by the dark fiend?
Classical, weird telling of a classic, weird tale
Though the subject and story may be familiar to most, Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary may seem a strange creature to many. Experimental filmmaker Guy Maddin has put together an impressionistic and expressionistic (mostly) black-and-white cinematic adaptation (of sorts) of a Royal Winnipeg Ballet adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic take on a Transylvanian monster. That's a lot of narrative layers, but Maddin thrives in this environment. Structured at once like a silent film homage-bricolage (with grim nods to the likes of Nosferatu, of course) and a—classical—music video, this potent filmic curiosity should be praised for its inventiveness and dauntlessness, if not for its complete success as a movie.
No dialogue graces the film—fantastically melodramatic intertitles and the dramatic language of dance are meant to tell the story. The visual roughness of Dracula's 16mm and Super 8 mix are a stark contrast to the passionate, elegant, rousing all-Mahler score. The occasional sound effect does make an appearance (like the wet, crunching sound of separating a vampiress head from a vampiress body with a shovel), however, as does the occasional stab of color—like blood red and lucre green, not to mention the various monochrome tints throughout. The sum of all this is something more than kitsch but something less than fulfilling, unfortunately.
Though Dracula's editing is on the whole sharp and impressive, the low-res visuals and often claustrophobic cinematography can get a bit tiresome and frustrating after awhile. When the dancing seems to be losing out to the dynamics of the camera, more often than not the film's spectacle turns to a bit of a mess, as dance-on-film shows its limitations. Some terribly striking images and wonderfully rich lighting make up for some of these losses in the end result, however. And even though this short feature (73 minutes) can feel like it's going on too long at times, at least it has a very good sense of humor, however macabre.
Birtwhistle and Wei-Qiang stand out as the film's most striking figures—Lucy with her energy and allure and Dracula with his otherworldliness and menacing grace. Van Helsing also cuts an imposing figure, but it's the love-and-lust pas-de-deux in this film that give it much of its weight.
