It was an honour and a great pleasure to work with Albert Serra on his masterpiece awarded the Pardo di Oro / Golden Leopard at the 66th Locarno IFF. We provided colour correction, VFX, DCP mastering and 35mm film recording and you definitely should not miss this remarkable gem where Casanova meets Dracula.
Casanova is acquainted with his new manservant, who will bear witness to his final days of life. Leaving a French château with its typical 18th century licentious atmosphere, he spends his final days in impoverished, dismal northern Europe. There, his frivolous, high society world crumbles, as well as his Enlightenment rationalism, when faced with the new, violent, esoteric and romantic force of Dracula and his eternal power.
Albert Serra enters the eighteenth century with a drama—carnal, whimsical, tremulous, intimate, philosophical—that’s set partly in Switzerland and partly in Transylvania. The setup could be described as “Casanova meets Dracula”—or, sceptical, empirical modernity, the cult of calculated, maximized pleasure meets the cult of pain and mystique, of the irrepressible and inextricable atavistic and pre-rational forces.