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CARMILLA
Director: Emily Harris Cast: Hannah Rae, Devrim Lingnau, Jessica Raine, Tobias Menzies, Greg Wise, Lorna Gayle MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:34 Release Date: 7/17/20 (virtual cinema) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 16, 2020 Before Dracula, there was Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla, published a quarter of a century before Bram Stoker's iconic work. Writer/director Emily Harris has taken that early vampire story and, even though it's set in the original period of the late 19th century, adapted it with a somewhat modern sensibility. Her Carmilla is as much about the secret longings and fears of the heart as it is about mysterious nature of the title character. The movie might be even more about those intimate feelings. The resulting take on the story, lusciously filmed using the natural light of the sun and the dim glow of candles, makes the book's subtext more explicit. Our protagonist, the lonely Lara (Hannah Rae), is not just the victim of the temptation of a woman, whose allure and romantic advances are part of her supernatural essence and threat. Lara wants this kind of attention and affection from the start. Beyond the relationship between Lara and Carmilla (Devrim Lingnau), who stays at the estate of Lara's family after a carriage accident, Harris' story is about the conflict between the nature and desires of the protagonist and the judgement and superstitions of the culture surrounding her. Embodying the latter characteristics is Lara's governess Miss Fontaine (Jessica Raine). She is trying to dissuade her ward's left-handedness and uses corporal punishment to deter the young woman's curiosity about the world beyond her sheltered life. When the governess suspects Lara's excitement about female companionship, Fontaine's attitude becomes sterner still. As enticing as both the central relationship and the critique of contemporary social mores are, Harris' goals hit a bit of an unavoidable snag with the source material. The central question is Carmilla's nature, which grows more ambiguous as Fontaine rallies for a solution to her ward's temptation and possible physical destruction. The nature of the mysterious character isn't quite as uncertain earlier, because the movie is playing with and indulging in elements of horror. That leads to some dissonance when Fontaine and her superstitious ilk start to plot against Carmilla. They are meant to be wrong in the movie's view, but if our initial understanding of the character is to be believed, they are at least "correct" in a certain regard. Carmilla, then, becomes a movie somewhat at odds with itself—wanting to dissect and undermine the established narrative, while still needing to play along with it. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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