Nadja

In 1993, invited by David Lynch to come up with a low-budget genre movie, Michael Almereyda recombined characters from Bram Stoker and set them loose in contemporary New York. Nadja (Elina Löwensohn) is a disillusioned “young” vampire who imagines herself liberated by the death of her father, Count Dracula, but the unhinged Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) wants to destroy her as well, interrupting her reunion with twin brother Edgar (Jared Harris) and pursuing them into “a netherworld of shadows” (J. Hoberman). Shimmering 35mm cinematography alternates with hallucinatory Pixelvision (conjured by a Fisher-Price toy camera) to embody the feverish and fragmented nature of the vampire’s passionate feelings. As in Almereyda’s Twister (1989) and Another Girl Another Planet (1992), nearly all the characters are driven by misdirected desire: Nadja is obsessed with Edgar while inspiring romantic feelings in Lucy (Galaxy Craze) who is married to Van Helsing’s nephew Jim (Martin Donovan). Part seductive reverie, part spoof, Nadja is a delirious mashup of Andre Breton’s 1928 surrealist novel of the same name and Universal Pictures’ Dracula’s Daughter (1936). Simon Fisher Turner’s ethereal score is offset by propulsive pop songs from My Bloody Valentine, The Verve, and Space Hog. As Breton wrote: “Beauty must be convulsive or not at all.” Executive producer Lynch fully financed the film when other investors faded out. He has a cameo as a hypnotized morgue attendant.

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