Dear Reader,A recent bout of fever accompanied by a breakout of rashes had me rushing to the doctor, who confirmed what I had suspected all along: I am allergic to the sun. Although half-dead from the fever, I rejoiced at the implications of the diagnosis—I am a vampire! Not a full-fledged one, of course—the sight of blood, let alone its taste, makes my head spin—but halfway there. An umm-pire, maybe?I am drawn to all things dark and related to the dark—from owls to slender lorises, moths to bats, cobwebbed corners to mildewed books. If the said cobwebbed corners contain some restless spirits too, nothing like it. So, when Luc Besson’s Dracula (2025) dropped on Amazon Prime, I had to watch it. I was ready to be disappointed, but, surprisingly, I wasn’t.This is chiefly because of the way Besson handles Bram Stoker’s story—with lots of understated, absurdist humour while refraining from being an all-out spoof like Mel Brooks’ Dracula: Dead and Loving it. Also, Caleb Landry Jones, playing the protagonist, makes Dracula look androgynous—a nice change from the Alpha male image the undead count has.Besson’s Dracula is a love story rather than a revenge drama, which the original is. In the movie, the medieval prince of Wallachia starts off as a reluctant warrior and then gives it all up when his wife, Elisabeta, is killed during a siege. The rest of his long, everlasting life is shaped by this absence. He invites the wrath of god when he declares that his soul doesn’t belong to a god who cannot bring back his wife. Cursed to live forever, he roams the earth searching for his wife, hoping she will return one day.But before that, he tries to kill himself, only to find that god has taken away the solace of death from him. The scene in which the prince jumps again and again from a castle window, desperately seeking death, would have been poignant if its sentimentality had not been offset by the cartoonishly fast pace in which it is played. Then there are the gargoyles—the prince’s familiars—who titter exasperatedly at this grand show of despair, lightening the mood.Dracula’s search for Elisabeta among the countless woman all over the world down the centuries results in a set piece that is clearly the movie’s high point. In order to attract women to him, he invents a perfume so potent that nobody can resist it (in a nod to Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer). Wearing it, he charms his way through Tudor, Baroque, Rococo courts, with bevies of women literally dancing to his tune. Dracula here is the ace playboy, but again, Landry Jones’ feminine face neutralises the effect. He might as well be Woolf’s Orlando, switching genders through the ages to find out what it means to be human, irrespective of sexual affiliation.Luc Besson’s Dracula is not great but has its moments. It crumples towards the end when it suddenly starts taking itself seriously. But for the most part, it brandishes its plot holes (like Dracula’s and Elisabeta’s hair colour changing madly from blonde to black to brown) so nonchalantly that the effect is amusing.The Dracula myth is said to refer to our fear of outsiders (as a Romanian, Dracula would have been abhorred in Victorian England even if he hadn’t been a blood-sucker), of the intermingling of blood across classes, of women voicing their sexual needs. Symbolism aside, Dracula is a social parasite, whose very existence as a bloodthirsty lord is predicated on the fact that he can kill the countless poor in his land with impunity.An economically disadvantaged vampire probably would not survive a day, any heavenly curse preventing his death notwithstanding. In Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice did create a more working-class, morally upright vampire, who sucks the blood of small animals to sustain himself. But the mental image of a superior being like the vampire chewing contentedly on, say, an alley rat, is slightly bathetic, robbing the legend of its sexy sheen.The decadence inherent in the vampire story is undoubtedly one of the chief reasons behind its popularity. It is exploited to the hilt in Jim Jarmusch’s 2013 movie, Only Lovers Left Alive, which is considered a cult classic by millennials. Full of beautiful objects, including the lead actors, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, this film about two languishing vampires is suffused with a fin-de-siècle ennui which must be very appealing to millennials.Adam (Hiddleston) and Eve (Swinton) have been lovers for aeons. Untouched by death or its fears, they just laze, read, write music and canoodle, while sipping blood from flutes. Adam’s rundown Detroit apartment is strewn with faded velvet couches, vinyl records, vintage guitars. Feeling out of place everywhere with his great knowledge and refinement, he toys with the idea of suicide till he his rebuked by his wife for reading too much Keats and Byron.But the will to live is slipping away—not helped a little by the fact that their blood source is contaminated. They limp around in glorious Tangier till Adam is revived by the rapturous singing of Yasmine Hamdan in a dive bar. And, of course, by love, Eve’s love. The world might end but these two will be left alive, living on art and apocalyptic air.My will to continue is slipping away too as an antihistamine-induced drowsy numbness takes over. Let us meet next week.Till then,Anusua MukherjeeDeputy Editor, FrontlineCONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS