Nadja

Highly stylised b/w camerawork and Pixelvision, moody poeticism, and farcical genre parody merge to tantalising if not altogether coherent effect in Almereyda's quirky New York update on the Dracula story. The heavily Mittel-European persona of Löwensohn is used effectively as the Count's enigmatic, doomy daughter who hopes to tempt Lucy (Craze) away from her husband (Donovan), while desperately trying to get in touch with her own estranged twin brother. About blood, blood ties and breakdown (of familes, relationships and, perhaps, an entire society), it's an idiosyncratic film, admired by many for its strong atmosphere, and by this writer for its absurd(ist) casting of a barely recognisable Fonda as Donovan's mad uncle Van Helsing.