At the Locarno Festival, “Dracula,” Radu Jude’s devastating film about AI
Radu Jude’s “Dracula”: A Monster Film on AI and Cinema
It’s Grand Guignol, but it’s also tragic, as is often the case with Radu Jude, whose work scrutinizes the ravages of consumer society and social networks in his native Romania. Winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), the director, born in 1977 in Bucharest, received the Special Jury Prize in Locarno with Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023), arguably his masterpiece.
This year, the filmmaker is once again vying for the Golden Leopard with Dracula, a monster film about artificial intelligence (AI) applied to cinema. The pitch can be summed up in two lines: a screenwriter, who probably doesn’t have the energy to think, enlists AI to flesh out the writing of a vampire film.
In a bathrobe, at his desk, the thirty-something author (Adonis Tanta) gives a few instructions to a synthetic voice, which, in return, proposes the most grotesque and vulgar stories imaginable. The filmmaker sometimes balks, not wanting to wallow too much in the mire; but when he dares, it can become hilarious, such as when he asks the AI to draw inspiration from Dreyer’s film (Vampyr, 1932), but make it more commercial. Or to draw from Coppola’s Dracula (1992).
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