Didi

 

Didi (弟弟)

Writer & Director ~ Sean Wang

2024, US

Stars ~ Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Shirley Chen

 

Whereas many coming-of-age films centre on the precocious, the artistic, there are those like ‘Didi’ that extrapolate on the lives of unremarkable teens just trying to find themselves and get by. ‘Didi’ is more ‘Mid ‘90s’ or ‘Eight Grade’ than the nihilism of Clarks’ ‘Kids’ or forgotten outsiders of ‘Gummo’, or the sadness and socio-commentary of ‘War Pony’. The eponymous Chris is not necessarily likeable, being somewhat immature and seemingly unable to keep from saying inappropriate slurs from under his breath. He aspires to bro-ness. We laugh at and with his friends in painful recognition of their fumbling male bravado. But Chris’ attempt to ingratiate with girls and older skaters bring about the stress rather than the humour of awkward situations because we don’t know if he’ll be self-aware to do it. There’s not tremendous evidence that he is, that he has the skills.

 

Caught between two cultures and in a house full of women, Chris-Didi is somewhat torn, adrift, confused and clueless. How are you to meant to absorb your crush telling you “You’re pretty cute, for an Asian boy”? And then when watching Chris research and learn how to make new friends and, you know, talk to people, a lot of empathy and relatability is earned. In the adolescent context, every little thing, every little move is big with consequences. And you will be judged. The joy of the film is in seeing Chris take the first tentative baby-steps towards maturity, in learning how to talk to people and deciding what he cares about.

 

There is nothing new here, but that’s partly the point. Isaac Wang’s performance gathers more and more weight, and when the tears-and-speechifying comes, Joan Chen’s unaffectedness, her convincing genuine characterisation undermines any mawkish melodrama. ‘Didi’ is not as flashy or odd as, say, ‘I Saw the TV Glow’, but in its aching recognition of how hard it is to just grow up, ‘Didi’ is quite capable to leaving its mark. 

 

Dracula

John Badham, 1979, USA-UK

A fine, sumptuous remix of Stoker’s novel. We start with the thrilling and chilling shipwreck ~ one of the novel’s greatest sequences ~ and soon discover that many of the motifs from the excised first Transylvanian third of the novel are to be transposed to England. Our geography is the beach, Carfax Abbey, the asylum Billerbeck Hall and the woodland and graveyard between them. Carfax Abbey takes on the atmospheric burden of Castle Dracula with an excess of Gothic décor trimmings ~ just look at that banister with the dragon heads! Carfax, both interior and exterior, soaks up the essence of every single haunted old building ever conceived and layers it with thick webs; production designer Peter Murton really goes to town and the exterior alone is gorgeous in its dreariness and decay. But Billerbeck Hall gives the Abbey a run for its money with a startling interior with bridges like the spokes and inner-workings of some broken giant gadget. Both buildings are defined by madness and aristocratic affectations. The overblown design is a delight to indulge in, every shot beautifully rendered and photographed by Gilbert Taylor.

The interesting change in this adaptation is that it is more about the female characters’ unapologetic sexual longing rather than their seduction, the former being particularly to the fore and summed up in the smile that closes the drama. None of Dracula’s brides, the film says, ever regretted it. There is little hint of Lucy’s purity ever being returned. She goes to Dracula deliberately, seemingly committing adultery against Jonathan Harker without a second thought. Noticeably absent is the key moment from Stoker’s text where those infected by vampirism are returned to their former angelic wholesomeness.

Whilst Trevor Eve and Kate Nilligan give stoic, grounded performances, everyone else, led by Donald Pleasance and Lawrence Olivier, chew the scenery relentlessly. Olivier utilises an accent to hack away at his delightfully preposterous lines and Pleasance applies a litany of twitchy mannerisms and mumblings. Of course, such an adaptation is only as good as its Dracula and Frank Langella gives a wonderfully regal and charming characterisation, eloquent when he needs to be charming, but cold and pragmatic when facing his enemies. He is more Robert Quarry’s ‘Count Yorga’ than Legosi or Christopher Lee.

The length and weaknesses of Stoker’s novel repeatedly beg to be re-imagined. Like Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”, it is no mistake that almost every adaptation’s ending gets a shake-up, for the last stretch of the novel is the weakest. Hoisted to the sun, the final effects of Dracula’s deterioration in the sun are perhaps disappointing, but this perhaps is the film’s resistance against the turn-to-ash or go-up-in-flames finales of the usual vampire outings. The cape drifting off in the wind is just as evocative of persistent monstrousness as Harker running off at the end of Herzog’s “Nosferatu”.

Dracula: Prince of Darkness

Terence Fisher, 1966, UK

Terence Fisher again helms Hammer’s continuing vampire saga. Four British tourists travelling through the Carpathian Mountains find themselves the means and breakfast for the revival of the Count, instantly recognisable by now as Christopher Lee (as opposed to Bela Lugosi).

There is less overt seduction in this episode of the Dracula resurrection-destruction cycle: rather, there is the threat of being lost in a strange land at the mercy of malevolent foreigners and, worse, becoming one of them. It is the woman most prim and proper, most Victorian, repressed and fearful in manner who is converted into a sapphic vampiress. As usual, the war between Good and Evil, between civilised romance and bestial lust is fought on and over the female form. Even female vampires cannot resist the woman’s blood. A man is beheaded [-castrated] and his blood pours out to resurrect the Count. This resurrection is the film’s one true moment of gruesome excess, with Dracula’s servant Klove hanging the victim over the count’s ashen remains (having been destroyed by the sun in ‘Horror of Dracula’, and absent for ‘Brides of Dracula’) and slicing into his neck; in the original script, the decapitation was far more obvious, with Klove throwing aside the head, but the British censors objected and the scene was muted.

With Dracula resurrected, he quickly converts the

most frightened woman to his cause and then sets about a strange competition with her for victims; it is like the immoral, lusty daughter competing with the vampire father of date rape. This Dracula is, however, mute this time around (as David J. Skal puts it, “supposedly … something to do with Lee’s salary and a distaste for the original script”*), making him even more primal than ever, dashing around and taking his women rather than lulling them into submission. Key vampire traits are all present: fear of sex, fear of the foreign, big deserted houses, dark, forbidding locales, hints of lesbianism, culture clashes, religious hysteria and the protection of faith, et al. There are the quietly paranoid and hysterical locals who continue to stake their daughters ten years after Dracula’s original demise, as if they cannot trust even the dead sexuality of female bodies. Here, using the fractured nature and ‘states’ of Germany of the era, there is also the clash between old-fashioned Puritan religion (the opening funeral mob) and the less strict but no less devout monk played by Andrew Kier. It seems relevant that this apparently progressive monk totes a gun ~ which, of course, he never actually uses.

The film’s other memorable moment is what David J. Skal describes as “a gruesome, quasi-gang-bang involving a group of monks, a female vampire, a table and a stake.” All the rape metaphors inherent in vampirism are present. It seems appropriate that it is the one, nearly-raped female who fires the rifle shot that begins Dracula’s watery demise. Ultimately, the film scores in its stripped-down narrative, but mainly name-checks vampire folklore before a mildly spectacular finale (which, in a typical winning Hammer trait, closes the film abruptly with Dracula barely dead before the credits roll). The frigidity of ice had been shot and cracked, and the vampire has been repressed beneath once more.

·         “V Is for Vampire: An A to Z Guide to Everything Undead”, David J Skal (Plume, 1996)