Story of My Death

Award-winning Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra established himself as one of the most original and iconoclastic voices in contemporary cinema with his first two features Honor de Cavalleria (a radical, sun-soaked adaptation of Don Quixote) and Birdsong (a minimalist take on the Biblical tale of the Three Kings, shot in ashen black and white). In his highly anticipated latest feature, the incomparable auteur stages an encounter between two other legendary characters of world literature — Casanova and Count Dracula — to chart the collision between the eighteenth century of Enlightenment, rationalism and libertine sensuality and a nineteenth century founded upon Romanticism, obscurantism and violence.

Riffing on the title of Casanova's autobiography, Story of My Life (generally regarded as one of the most important treatises on eighteenth-century customs), História de la meva mort offers up a deliciously debauched tale as the famous womanizer — known for his expansive intellect and curiosity as much as his erotic exploits — travels with his sensitive servant to an idylic village in southern Carpathia, where his destiny intersects with a mysterious, bearded character. Radically, if quietly, transcending the costume-drama genre, História subverts staidness with its wit, stellar performances and a diffused naturalism.

Drawing upon literary and art-historical References — the mise en scène variously recalls Dutch baroque still-life master Claesz, with its glimmering crystal ware and glazed candied fruit, and the pink powdery rococo of Fragonard and Boucher — História oozes with indelible details, from a taxidermied goose to the brocade fabrics and wallpaper to the abundance of strewn, halfeaten pomegranates ("Every seed is like an idea," says Casanova). Recalling such great, eccentric period pieces as Luchino Visconti's Ludwig and Manoel de Oliveira's Francisca or Doomed Love with a drop of de trop, Serra's História is a film to be returned to for years to come, as its enigmas continue to reveal themselves over time.

ANDRÉA PICARD