Nadja (film)

Nadja is a 1994 American horror film written and directed by Michael Almereyda, starring Elina Löwensohn in the title role and Peter Fonda as Abraham Van Helsing.

Nadja is a vampire film which draws many characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, yet treats genre elements in an understated arthouse style. It received mixed reviews from critics.

Plot

Count Dracula dies from a stake in his heart. His daughter, Nadja, shows up to claim the body, hoping that his death will free her from the life he has forced on her. She has the body cremated and prepares to take the ashes to Brooklyn and pay a visit to her twin brother Edgar. Before she departs, she stops for a drink and meets Lucy, a similarly disillusioned young woman. They leave the bar and have sex.

Following his killing of Dracula, Van Helsing has been jailed, and his nephew, Jim (who is also Lucy’s husband) bails him out. When Van Helsing learns that Dracula’s body has been removed from the morgue, he enlists his nephew’s help to destroy it properly, and thus ensure Dracula will never return.

Meanwhile, Nadja visits Edgar, who is sick, and meets his nurse and live-in lover, Cassandra. Nadja persuades Cassandra to move Edgar to her apartment and plans to heal him by transfusing him with plasma from the blood of shark embryos; Edgar revives enough to drink some of Nadja’s blood.

Lucy has fallen under Nadja’s trance. She leads Jim and Van Helsing to Edgar’s house, where Nadja is staying with Renfield. Edgar awakens and warns Cassandra that she is in danger. Cassandra, revealed to be Van Helsing’s daughter, attempts to escape with Nadja pursuing her, Lucy pursuing Nadja, and Jim pursuing Lucy. Cassandra runs into a gas station, where two mechanics attempt to protect her, but Nadja mesmerizes them and kills one of them. A policeman enters the gas station and shoots Nadja in the abdomen.

Edgar, who is improving, unites with the Van Helsings to stop Nadja. He receives a “psychic fax” from Nadja, telling him that she is injured and must return to Transylvania with Cassandra. As they approach the castle, Nadja begins a transfusion of Cassandra’s blood while she sleeps. Edgar and Helsing drive a stake through Nadja’s heart. Lucy is released, Nadja is destroyed, and Cassandra awakens.

Despite the assumed happy ending, Nadja narrates the epilogue: “They cut off my head… burned my body… no one knew… no one suspected that I was now alive in Cassandra’s body. Edgar and I were married at City Hall… there is a better way to live.”

Cast

Elina Löwensohn as Nadja

Peter Fonda as Van Helsing

Suzy Amis as Cassandra

Galaxy Craze as Lucy

Martin Donovan as Jim

Karl Geary as Renfield

Jared Harris as Edgar

David Lynch (also Executive Producer) as Morgue Attendant (cameo)

Nic Ratner as Bar Victim

Jack Lotz as Boxing Coach

Isabel Gillies as Waitress

Jose Zuniga as Bartender

Bernadette Jurkowski as Dracula’s Bride

Jeff Winner as Young Dracula

Bob Gosse as Garage Mechanics

Rome Neal as Garage Mechanics

Giancarlo Roma as Romanian Kid

Anna Roma as Romanian Mother

Thomas Roma as Romanian Policemen

Aleksandar Rasic as Romanian Policemen

Miranda Russell as Lucy’s Baby

Production

Nadja was written by Michael Almereyda after a planned project called Fever (centered around Edgar Allan Poe) failed to attract financing. The 1928 surrealist novel Nadja by André Breton served as an inspiration for the thematic approach, with Almereyda also studying several classic vampire films and lore. Even with a comparatively more commercial script than Fever, the production still faced hurdles in acquiring financing due to the decision to film Nadja in black and white rather than color, which was deemed necessary as both a cost-saving measure and thematically important. When financing fell through, David Lynch financed the entire film himself.

To attain a “blurry, out of focus” look to convey the point of view of the living dead, Almereyda shot the film using a Fisher-Price PixelVision camcorder. Almereyda attempted to make the film in a similar style to Roger Corman, with the Corman-produced Poe films a particular source of inspiration for not only style and tone, but frugal film-making. The movie was filmed over the course of five and a half weeks in New York City. An abandoned hospital on Central Park West was used to simulate a Transylvanian castle.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Nadja holds an approval rating of 64% based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website’s critics’ consensus reads: “Nadja approaches the Dracula legend from an idiosyncratic angle – and with just enough visual style to overcome uneven storytelling.”

Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film a rating of two-and-a-half out of four stars, characterizing it as “an example of a genre we can call Deadpan Noir. It’s the kind of movie that deals with unspeakable subjects while keeping a certain ironic distance and using dialogue that seems funny, although the characters never seem in on the joke.”

References

External links

Nadja at IMDb

Nadja at Rotten Tomatoes

Nadja at Box Office Mojo