Nadja is a vampire film, technically. But it’s really a lo-fi, black-and-white art piece where Elina Löwensohn drifts through a grainy, urban twilight while whispering existential poetry that smolders with ennui.
That’s my kind of party.
Produced by David Lynch – who probably did it just so he could cameo as the morgue attendant – Nadja takes the Bram Stoker mythology and strips it down to its boney insides, replacing horror with metaphor, deadpan irony and a detached, downtown cool… the whole thing feels like someone unearthed some long lost Jim Jarmusch vampire flick. The performances range from hypnotic (Löwensohn) to manic (Peter Fonda as a hilariously unhinged Van Helsing), and the whole thing is spackled with that distinctively 90s indie film texture – shot on pixelated consumer-grade video before being transferred to film, so it looks like it exists in some half-remembered 50’s perfume commercial.
If your idea of a good time is hanging out with the Only Lovers Left Alive, or you’ve ever sat in a café at 2 AM in 1996 debating whether The Addiction or The Hunger was the better philosophical vampire flick while a friend chain-smoked and muttered something about Martin, this one’s for you. -Pop