Your Daily Dracula – Marilú Marini as Countess Dolingen, Les Jeux de la Comtesse Dolingen de Gratz (1981)

Your Daily Dracula – Marilú Marini as Countess Dolingen, Les Jeux de la Comtesse Dolingen de Gratz (1981)

The opening credits state that this is an adaptation of Unica Zürn’s Dark Spring and the first chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – though the extract au pair Lucy Splitter (Marini) reads from Dracula is actually the pendant story (supposed deleted chapter) ‘Dracula’s Guest’.  Other films have claimed to be based on the story, but this at least actually depicts the Carmilla-homaging Countess onscreen (also played by Marini) if only for a minute or so.  In jigsaw-style – echoing Providence or Images and prefiguring Nocturnal Animals or Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters – the film embeds Zürn’s autobiographical novella in an original frame, though writer-director Catherine Binet also includes allusions to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (lingering over woodcut illustrations), Edgar Allan Poe (Robert Stephens pops in as a lecturer and reads ‘Silence’ to a class of unimpressed girls – Zürn’s protagonist wets herself during the story) and Roald Dahl (a conte cruel evokes his ‘Back for Christmas’), elements of Zürn’s’s own life (like the protagonist of her story and her avatar in this film, she took her own life) and Binet’s tangle of relationships with significant European artists (more on her here – https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2018/after-the-french-new-wave/vampire-country-sex-and-psychoanalysis-in-the-films-of-catherine-binet/).

It’s a remarkable film, little-seen on release (scuppering yet another promising female directorial career) and neglected thereafter – possibly its tasteful yet frank depiction of the twelve-year-old girl (Katia Wastchenko) in Dark Spring sliding nude down a banister or being molested by her brother (‘if you tell mother, I’ll never speak to you again, I’ll never lend you my bicycle and I’ll kill you’) let alone her eventual suicide would make a 21^st century re-release challenging.  In the frame story, neglected Louise (Carol Kane) is profoundly affected by Dark Spring – which is here the work of her institutionalised schizophrenic friend Nena (Marucha Bo) – while her older, paternalist (he calls her ‘mon enfant’) husband (Michael Londsdale) is cold, neglectful and dismissive (Lonsdale’s face is turned away from the camera until the last scenes) as he collects broken angel art and obsesses over a wily sneak thief who continually gains entrance to his home, purloins his knick-knacks and drinks his wine.

The thief (Roberto Plate) is also in Dark Spring as the older Argentinian guy the little girl has a crush on, one of several threads which link all the levels of the story – in Dark Spring, the child smashes a doll given her by her father’s mistress, but in the frame film Louise gives her husband a piece of the doll for his collection (Binet can’t possibly be referencing that Spanish giallo, but this chunk is literally The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll).  It’s gorgeously shot by William Lubtchansky with an evocative score by Carlos D’Alessio and an eclectic cast runs to tiny bits from Marina Vlady and Emmanuelle Riva.