There is much self-conscious artiness. Pining over her unrequited love for her cousin, Carmilla wanders past fluted columns on his Italian estate, Mircalla's regal 18th-century white dress billowing about Carmilla. Resplendent fireworks intercut Carmilla's beautifully brooding wanderings, punctuating her suppressed passions. Her dark heartsickness contrasts with the colorfully costumed guests reveling at a masque ball - honoring Georgia's engagement to Von Karnstein. Carmilla must feign joy over the very cause of her heartbreak. Beautiful, brooding, broken-hearted — the Goth's ideal of the romantic vampire!
Carmilla's suicidal depression over Von Karnstein's impending marriage leaves her easy prey for Mircalla's spirit, whose voiceovers guide Carmilla to her tomb, where she possesses Carmilla's body. Some may regard the voiceover device, especially atop the fireworks and perfume commercial mise-en-scene, to be overmuch. Some do regard Mircalla's melodramatic monologues to be bathetic.
The Overlook Encyclopedia says: "Clearly intended as an art-house horror movie, it aims for a dreamily languorous rhythm which never quite manages to overcome the obstacles posed by stilted performances (Ferrer in particular), bathetic dialogue, and direction too prosaic to achieve the necessary intensity."
While I can see where Phil Hardy is coming from, Blood and Roses works for me. Yes, I suppose some of the dialogue evokes the adolescent poetics of a Meat Loaf CD. Von Karnstein's mask does indeed resemble a Bat Out of Hell. Yet I find the film to be poignant rather than bathetic, and saw no problem with anyone's performance, Ferrer's included. But then, I like Meat Loaf's music. If Meat Loaf's aesthetic sensibility resonates with you, chances are you'll like Blood and Roses. That may sound an odd comparison, yet while the film lacks Meat Loaf's aggressive, leather-clad biker machismo, it shares an impassioned, operatic undercurrent.
Carmilla is forever wandering about the estate in Mircalla's 18th-century white dress, proud and dignified (and resembling the siren in Meat Loaf's I'll Do Anything for Love video, albeit more subdued). Behind Carmilla are backdrops of crumbling castles and autumnal colors. And yet, aside from their perfume commercial beauty, Vadim/Renoir's panoramic long shots function aesthetically. By evoking an impressionistic painting, the composition subsumes Carmilla into the old world of her aristocratic ancestor.
Long shots usually disempower a character, the small character overwhelmed by her surroundings. Yet in Blood and Roses they achieve an opposite effect. Although Carmilla is arguably disempowered (because she is possessed), her regal bearing as Mircalla (in Carmilla's body) is empowered by the compositions. She walks past castles and columns and neatly aligned trees with confidence and dignity, seemingly in command of her aristocratic surroundings.
Article comments