Introduction to Radu Jude’s Unique Cinematic Style
Radu Jude’s latest film, while ostensibly about the vampire Dracula, unfolds as an eccentric floor-show performed by a quirky ensemble of actors. The Romanian director’s work is characterized by a spontaneous, low-budget theatricality reminiscent of Brecht or Fassbinder. His films often appear improvised, crafted from whatever materials are at hand, including snippets of television advertisements, subpar AI technology used in poor-quality pornography (a subject he explored in an earlier film), and amateur dramatics featuring actors in absurd costumes. Jude’s cinema gives the impression of being created on the spot, with each film seemingly intended for a single viewing; a second viewing might reveal only emptiness, as if Jude and his troupe have packed up and disappeared.
A Lengthy, Satirical Exploration of Dracula
This new film is ambitiously extended to an epic duration, blending slapstick comedy with moments of dullness, which are somewhat redeemed by sharp, incisive satire. The narrative centers, at least nominally, on Dracula. More precisely, it follows a self-satisfied and condescending filmmaker, portrayed by Adonis Tanta, who introduces the audience to a cheaply produced film about Dracula that he is assembling on his iPad using intolerable AI technology. Parallel to this, a raucous group of actors performs a Dracula-themed floor show in what appears to be a restaurant setting. Among them, veteran Romanian actor Gabriel Spahiu plays an elderly, delusional thespian who once believed himself to be Dracula, while Oana Maria Zaharia embodies Vampira, a seductive and genuinely vampiric figure.
This troupe invites the audience to engage in sexual interactions with the cast members. Alternatively, it offers families a more innocent form of entertainment: a hide-and-seek game where the audience chases the vampire actors out into the streets.
Interwoven Mini-Films and Thematic Depth
The film intersperses these performances with a series of mini-films within the film, each exploring themes related to Dracula. The most compelling of these is a story set during the communist era, focusing on a truck driver who falls in love with a local woman. During a ride, he shocks her by revealing he is married, prompting her to leap from his vehicle and impale herself in a manner reminiscent of Vlad the Impaler.
Beyond this, the film serves as a pantomime-phantom of Romania’s local hero and consistently lucrative intellectual property. Dracula is portrayed as a symbol of the country’s persistent undead legacies: fascism, antisemitism, clerical arrogance, an exploitative service economy, and stakeholder capitalism. This is particularly connected to a late 1990s proposal for a Dracula theme park, in which thousands of Romanian citizens invested money they never recovered.
Critical Reflection and Anticipation
The film may challenge viewers’ patience and, in the reviewer’s opinion, lacks the vigor and coherence found in Jude’s previous works such as or . Despite its efforts to distance itself from vampire genre clichés, Dracula remains a somewhat overexposed figure, verging on cliché itself. The reviewer speculates that Jude might one day create a biopic addressing political vampirism, focusing on Romania’s most significant historical figures, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu.
Nevertheless, the film contains moments of startling madness that punctuate its unconventional narrative.
Did Radu Jude just invent pop-up cinema? The Romanian director’s movies have a wildly improvised, no-budget theatricality in the spirit of Brecht or Fassbinder, a make-do-and-mend cinema that looks as if it has been made up on the spot with the materials to hand, including bits of TV ads, bad AI in the service of bad porn (what he, in an earlier film, called ) and amdram scenes with actors in ridiculous dress-up. It sometimes seems as if each Jude film is almost to be viewed once only; if you press play again, or go to the cinema to see it a second time, there will be only a blank screen, as if Jude and his ragged company have folded their tents and vanished.
This new movie is crazily stretched out to epic length with knockabout comedy and stretches of tedium redeemed (just about) with angry, pointed satire. It is – notionally – about Dracula; or rather, about a smug and supercilious film-maker (Adonis Tanta) introducing us to the cheapo film he is concocting on the subject on his iPad, using unbearable AI. We also see a rackety troupe of actors doing a floor-show routine about Dracula in what looks like a restaurant, with veteran Romanian actor Gabriel Spahiu playing the aged and delusional old thesp who once thought he really was Dracula, and Oana Maria Zaharia as Vampira, a sexy and, indeed, vampy representative of the undead. This group encourages its audience to have sexual encounters with the cast-members; it also offers families a more wholesome kind of hide-and-seek romp where the audience chase the vampire actors out into the street.
All this is interspersed with set-piece mini-films-within-a-film on Dracula-adjacent themes, of which the most successful is a communist-era tale of a truck driver who falls in love with a local woman. While giving her a lift, he horrifies her by confessing he is married, and she jumps from his lorry and Vladishly impales herself. Otherwise, this is a pantomime-phantom of Romania’s local hero and reliably profitable IP; here, he is the image of the country’s undead-persistent strains of fascism, antisemitism, clerical arrogance, exploitative service economy and stakeholder capitalism. Specifically, this relates to a proposal for a Dracula theme park in the late 1990s in which thousands of Romanian citizens invested money that they would never see again.
The film will test your patience a bit and, for me, it doesn’t have the energy and focus of Jude’s or . Also, for all that Dracula distances itself from the cliches involved in the vampire industry, the fact is that the wildly overexposed count is a bit of a cliche itself. One day, I predict, Jude will make a biopic of political vampirism about the most pressing Romanian subject of all: Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu. At all events, there are moments of startling insanity here.
