Michael Almereyda's Nadja (Part 2 of 4)

Jim and Van Helsing may be off having a jolly old time discussing undead ‘till they’ve reached the bottom of the glass, but that’s a typical scenario for grown men who still behave as though they were irresponsible children. The more adult games are played by the women, specifically Nadja as she embarks upon nights on the town driven by her loyal slave, Renfield (Irish actor Karl Geary). She’s first seen picking up an eager young victim in a bar, talking about what a bastard her father is. She needs to simplify her life. She needs to quit smoking. As actress Elena Lowensohn’s character said in Hal Hartley’s Amateur, and this easily applies to her Nadja as well: “I want to be a mover and a shaker.”

Now that Nadja’s father Count Dracula is finally dead (and she torches the ashes to make sure, presided over by befuddled morgue attendant David Lynch!) she can really be free to indulge in her own fancies. This leads her along a strange path, starting when she chooses innocent Lucy as a potential lover based on a barroom encounter. She falls in love quickly, but not well. The pain she feels, as she is quick to inform Lucy (and us), is the pain of fleeting joy. It sounds pretentious, but this informs her desires. She chases taboos with a curious appetite (and her first taste of Lucy’s blood is from menstruation, which in an odd way affirms womanhood and acknowledges our culture’s inability to talk about such "messy" things.)

Moving away from Lucy for a spell, she fixes her attention on her distant, hate filled twin brother Edgar (Jared Harris, later the happy drunk hero of Almereyda's mummy film, The Eternal). If her attraction to Lucy contains the lesbian Eros (and who sounds pretentious now? Me, that’s who!), her psychic bond with Edgar is closely linked with incest and her obsessive need to tighten the family unit. At a time when all the lonely people hover in ambivalence, she seeks to reaffirm her cracked notion of family values. Twisted, ain’t it?

Elena Lowensohn plays Nadja as something of an overgrown teenager, prone to drawn-out philosophical explanations while chain-smoking. Every smile and pout is distinct and scratched clean of artifice, made manifest in Lowensohn’s sincere portrayal. She may be a murderess who attempts to steal away the lifeblood of Lucy, who never asked to be taken advantage of or mindfucked, but she does it with a self-deprecating whisper. It’s no good to fight something so elemental as the vampire, particularly when she’s drawing on sensations lurking discreetly under the surface. Jim might be fucking around on her, so who’s to say Lucy wasn’t acting appropriately in picking up some stranger in a smoky bar? Be careful what you wish for. They all come out in the half-life.

Go To Page: 1

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic