After a freak attack on a city street by a strange woman, a philosophy student develops a hunger for human blood ...
This starts out right in the audience's face, with footage of a US army massacre in Vietnam, leading to counter-balanced reactions between the protagonist and her friend - but which don't seem connected to the title of the movie. Then straight on to the attack, which is done with style and does connect directly ... in to the thematic jugular, so to speak.
So we're set up for a reflection on the strange phenomenon of addiction, right? Well, through a jumble of philosophical aphorisms and paradoxes casually tossed out through dialogue the movie shifts to an exploration of the will to power, then to original sin, and ends with an off-the-shelf rite of religious redemption. But even if the line of inquiry were clear - say, by just settling on Nietzsche's version - none of this philosophy is brought to life on the screen. I couldn't find it in the structure of the story, or the dilemmas faced by the heroine, or in the cinematography or music (although I did appreciate being introduced to Eine Sylvesternacht).
The performances are mostly casual, with the protagonist going through a crude flip in personality before ripping off her clothes in a frenzy. Thankfully there is Christopher Walken, who provides the only real bite as a mannered, pitiless vampire - in the context of the climax, really a fallen angel.
The cinematography is mostly bland, the flat B&W shoved in as a gimmick with little thought for light and shadow. There are several episodes where footage of massacres is just plonked on the screen - contrast that with the emotion in the record of human violence as presented to Leeloo in The Fifth Element, when we see the reaction in her face. That's how to do it in a movie. On the other hand, the seedy energy of the streets is well captured, and the pace is OK.
What the film-maker sets up is the depravity of humankind, but solely for the purpose of ramming home his preferred brand of salvation. Not at all philosophical - just an exercise in scolding the audience for the sake of his own justification. So that would be a sermon, then.
Overall: Quite a mess. Amen.
