Such unfulfilled promise is a crime.

Rating: 2/10 (16 June 1999)

Few flims have disappointed me so deeply as this one. The cinematography is beautiful, and I honestly don't think I can count on my hands the number of films I have seen that were more visually stunnning. But the praise ends there. The film promises a tragic romance, but delivers only stagnant plot movement, seemingly drawn out to prolong the background scenery, and flat, shallow characters with whom I did not find any sympathy. Indeed, I found the love affair a tad repulsive, and the immorality of the characters does play some role in this. The majority of my dissatisfaction, however, resides with my lack of interest in their lives: if the characters have emotion, the audience is not brought to share in that emotion. I felt quite numb watching this movie, and that is a terrible mistake for a tragic work... tragedy relies on emotion and sympathy, both of which are absent here. The main symbolic thread of the story, the Count's memory and his book, suffers from the same malaise: if it were easier to care about his character, his memories would be very touching. Unfortunately, the film does not do its job in executing this idea. In short, there are great possibilities in this film for an excellent overall work, but it seems that the story was neglected in favour of adding effort to the visual aesthetics. Usually, films are revised to add new effects to an existing storyline... Sabrina comes to mind. In this case, the director should be given a second chance to dazzle audiences with a stunning remake, to add emotion to the existing effects.