Last month, I was lucky enough to be included in Final Girl Stacie Ponder's FINAL GIRL FILM CLUB, the movie of the month being Adam Green's FROZEN. This month, it's a movie that I have not seen yet, up until now...Roger Vadim's BLOOD AND ROSES aka TO DIE OF PLEASURE.
Originally presented to me as a "lesbian vampire tale", which is apparantly what the source material (the novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheriden le Fanu) is, I was expecting to see a ton of good ol' gothic style cleavage and a whole lotta blood. But instead, I got an atmospheric, slow moving tale of a woman on the brink of madness...OR the tale of a vampire's spirit out to reclaim lost love, that's for you to decide.
The Karnstein Castle in Italy is soon to be the setting for the wedding of Leopoldo Von Karnstein and his fiance, Georgia. And while everyone is celebrating, it seems Leopoldo's visiting cousin, Carmilla, is having some issues with the whole thing. We are first introduced to Carmilla as she tells the story of their ancestors as she stands in front of a painting of Millarca Von Karnstein, whom she eerily resembles.
The Karnstein family have an interesting history. 200 years ago, driven by paranoia and fears that they were a family of vampires, the peasants of the village marched up to the castle's cemetery and drove stakes through the hearts of every corpse. But one vampire survived, Millarca. She died on the eve of her wedding day and her body was removed from her tomb by her husband to be (and cousin!) Ludwig....saving her from the slaughter. Ludwig swore his love to her forever. But as he went on about his life, he was to marry three different woman, all who mysteriously died before the wedding day.
We learn that her looks are not the only thing that Carmilla has in common with her ancestor Millarca, as she too is in love with her cousin. But Leopoldo belongs to Georgia now. This hurts Carmilla so much that she can't even attend the engagement celebration. Instead, she stays in her room, drunk and dancing by herself. Meanwhile, everyone around her is concerned for her mental state.
So, drunk and alone in her room, the whispering begins. The voice of the long dead Millarca begins to lure Carmilla to her tomb. So she puts on Millarca's long-saved wedding dress, freaks the fuck out of the party guests, and heads down to the tombs. What happens next is either some type of possession or a drunken hallucination. The next morning, they find her passed out in Leopoldo's bed.
When Carmilla awakes, she seems to be a bit worse off than she was in the first place. She scares a horse and is pained by the sun. The whispering continues, this time telling her that she NEEDS blood. So she starts creeping around the castle's late night, foggy grounds in Millarca's wedding dress, scaring the shit out of the servants who live in a cottage separate from the castle. And just like the villagers from 200 years ago, the servant's begin to think that they are being haunted by some sort of vampire...the question is, are they?! Is Carmilla possessed by the spirit of her vampire ancestor, ready to ruin the wedding plans of her one true love? Or is she simply a crazy woman, wandering around in a dead woman's wedding dress?
While we are given clues to indicate that Carmilla is indeed a vampire, there is also the sense that she is just a fragile young woman who cannot come to terms with losing the love of her life (her cousin!) and is spiraling into absolute madness. It's ambiguity reminded me of watching LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH. There's something to be said for a movie that let's you decide what you think is going on. In both cases, the minute the movie ended, I went back and watched it again. Interestingly enough, I found out that marrying your first cousin is legal in 20 states, mine (Connecticut) being one of them! My next family reunion is July 16th...I'll let you know how I make out.
BLOOD AND ROSES has some fantastic cinematography and is rich with atmosphere that only really stumbles once throughout the movie. About halfway through, there is an incredibly awkward and completely cheesy scene where Carmilla and Leopoldo are sitting at the piano. As she plays, Leopoldo entertains us with a charade-type interpretation of him fishing on a boating. I understand that it was meant to demonstrate the relationship between the two, but it seemed like something more fit for a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movie, or something Charlie and Grandpa Joe might do in WILLY WONKA.
But that's okay, because there is a scene not too long after where Carmilla becomes enraged and smashes her wine glass against the table and with broken stem, takes a drink from the glass, lays it down letting the rest of the wine spill out across the table. That scene gave me fucking goosebumps. Since I watched it on Netflix, this is the best I can do for ya...
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| Sip |
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| Smash! |
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| Sip (no stem!) |
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| Spill |
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| Brilliant! |
While it wasn't the lesbo-vamp fest that I was expecting (only one scene of two girls kissing), I'm so glad that this movie was brought to my attention. BLOOD AND ROSES is a tastefully sensual and ultimately tragic tale of the broken-hearted and how love and madness, a lot of the time, go hand in hand.
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