Nadja (1994)


The 1990s saw a spate of vampire movies focused around New York, including The Addiction, Habit and even Vampire in Brooklyn.  Save for the last they dealt with non-vampiric subjects in the background, such as drug abuse and loneliness.  Meanwhile, another low-budget feature set in the Big Apple, Nadja, attempted to update the most famous vampire story of all.

Nadja (Elina Löwensohn) is a Romanian vampire and the illegitimate daughter of Dracula (Peter Fonda).  She roams the streets of New York at night looking for young men to feed upon while spending her days bathing in blood under the careful watch of her slave Renfield (Karl Geary).  Things change when she senses her father's death and starts realizing that she suddenly has a freedom she hasn't had in her entire life.  This leads her to pursue a mortal woman named Lucy (Galaxy Craze) who happens to be married to Jim (Martin Donovan).  Jim, in turn, is the nephew of Van Helsing (Fonda), the man who killed Dracula.

Jim gets his uncle out of jail and is told the story of Nadja and her brother Edgar (Jared Harris).  Edgar is now residing in Brooklyn with his nurse Cassandra (Suzy Amis) and Nadja, though the two don't get along, is determined to bring him home.  Edgar regains his health and, when Nadja decides to return to their ancestral home, helps Van Helsing, Jim and Lucy to pursue her in order to destroy her.

Michael Almereyda had a low budget to the point where he had to film in black and white.  This isn't a detriment as a number of his scenes look amazing.  The problem is instead of filming the entire film on regular film stock he decided to use a Fisher Price camera manufactured in 1989 that created a pixilated effect.  It may have looked good for one or two shots, but a good portion of the movie is filmed this way in order to give Nadja a bit more "otherworldliness".  He may have thought it as an artistic choice, but it makes a good deal of the movie difficult to see. 

As for the actual movie it is a confused mess with a threadbare plot that thinks it is more important than it really is.  Rather than being the artful exploration of the clash of the feminine and masculine that it appears Almereyda was going for Nadja just comes across as a pretentious retread of Bram Stroker's tale and other vampire tropes.  David Lynch has a cameo and appears to have kicked in some financing or help with distribution and it often seems Almereyda is trying to emulate Lynch's style without much success. 

At times it seems like Nadja wants to be a comedy but, in truth, it never decides on what the tone should be or even what the story is, and the wrap-up comes out of nowhere.  Even the New York setting has no major impact on the story unlike many of its contemporaries.  While it may not be as tedious a watch as The Addiction it has less to say and even less style.  Even its one attempt at a shocking scene seems old hat and forced.  It's sad because in better hands this could have worked as both art and satire.  In Almereyda's hands it barely works as a movie. 

Nadja (1994)
Time: 93 minutes
Starring: Elina Löwensohn, Peter Fonda, Martin Donovan, Galaxy Craze, Jared Harris
Director: Michael Almereyda

 

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