{"id":116196,"date":"2020-10-14T16:39:53","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T15:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=116196"},"modified":"2020-10-16T05:36:11","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T04:36:11","slug":"carmilla-the-age-of-innocence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/cinema\/carmilla-the-age-of-innocence\/","title":{"rendered":"Carmilla: The Age Of Innocence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu\u2019s 1872 Gothic novella has a long history of adaptation and reinvention in cinema. <\/span>In 1932, Carl Dreyer\u2019s Vampyr<\/strong><\/em> stripped away the lesbian erotica, in the Sixties, horror legend Christopher Lee starred in a good-looking but barely coherent Italian version of the text called Terror In The Crypt<\/strong><\/em>, Hammer Horror had a stab at it in 1976, with The Vampire Lovers<\/strong><\/em>, starring Peter Cushing and Ingrid Pitt, and the 1972 Spanish film, The Blood Splattered Bride<\/strong><\/em>, has been hailed as a cult classic for its X-rated but progressive, feminist handling of Carmilla\u2019s<\/strong><\/em> themes.<\/p>\n

In 2020, director\/writer Emily Harris\u2019 interpretation hits UK cinema screens. Filmed in 2017 at an Elizabethan manor house in East Sussex, she transposes the time to the 1780s and relocates to rural England.<\/p>\n

The film strikes an eerie ambiance from the start, introducing its isolated, 15-year-old protagonist Lara (Hannah Rae) as a captive of sorts to her stern governess, Miss Fontaine (Jessica Raine). When a horse and carriage crash brings an auburn-haired mysterious stranger, Carmilla (Devrim Lingnau), to their door, Miss Fontaine\u2019s suspicions and superstition lead her to believe she is in fact the devil.<\/p>\n

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Miss Fontaine (Jessica Raine) believes that Carmilla is the devil.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never actually read the book before, so when I did, I found that aspects of it really intrigued me, which I felt hadn\u2019t been expressed in cinema before and that made me want to make it,\u201d explains Harris. Her previous background in theatre gave her a fresh approach to the adaptation: \u201cHaving worked in theatre as an interpretive art form I didn\u2019t have an aversion to something being done before. You can see the same thing being interpreted in different ways so that in itself was exciting; seeing what my version would be.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time I came to it, it was reflecting a lot of what was happening in the world in terms of how we were behaving as a society and those aspects of human nature that were coming to the fore were very obvious to me in the book. It felt like the right time to explore it in this way, to look at how prejudice and hate towards an outsider has become so ingrained as part of normal life. We\u2019ve started to accept that as the norm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Themes of fear, persecution and sexual awakening are key in Carmilla<\/strong><\/em>. As far as the fantasy and vampiric elements go, Harris decided to take her interpretation in a new direction. \u201cI tried to really think about, what is a vampire? Where does the vampire come from in literature and what does it represent?\u201d she says. \u201cFor me, a vampire has always represented the feeling of being in love. That feeling, when you have fallen deeply in love, and you just want to find a way to keep the person or create a mutual pact! I guess that\u2019s really weird, but it\u2019s just this visceral urge where you just want to attach to somebody and make sure they\u2019re yours forever and ever. I really relate to vampirism in that way, which isn\u2019t actually scary it\u2019s just very practical. I guess what I was seeing in Carmilla<\/strong><\/em> was definitely that first coming-of-age moment of love. I was trying to reflect first love and using that idea of vampirism in that way. So, it\u2019s not this scary thing, it\u2019s a feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019 conversations with Hannah Rae on set mainly focused on loss of innocence, first love and coming-of-age. \u201cThe way that we saw the relationship between Carmilla and Lara was very innocent,\u201d explains Rae. \u201cLara hasn\u2019t grown up with a lot of interaction with other kids her age. When Carmilla is introduced, it\u2019s like her coming-of-age, through their relationship, finding out who she is and how she deals with the situation. She\u2019s never experienced a girl like her, her own age before. We had lots of chats about the film, and I drew on my own experiences of being a 15-year-old and trying to find out who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Lara (Hannah Rae) hasn’t had much interaction with people her own age.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Phil Selway from Radiohead (who also has themes and music from Legion, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/strong><\/em> and iZombie<\/strong><\/em> under his belt), composed the score for Carmilla<\/strong><\/em>. \u201cHe came on board very early,\u201d says Harris. \u201cThe score and sound design are half the film so it was important that it wasn\u2019t left until the end of production. He had read the script very early on as he\u2019s a percussionist which I felt, from a storytelling point of view, made initial sense. When he read the screenplay, he said there was so much percussion in the script with the crunching leaves, crashing rain and crackling fire, so he developed a score that elevated the story. He gave it an element that I hadn\u2019t even thought about. He came on set and he absorbed the environment. The score definitely underpins all of the emotional arc that we were trying to get at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris introduces the world of Carmilla<\/strong><\/em> by juxtaposing rigid routine with the wild abandon of the natural surroundings. The interiors at night are all lit by candle and by day only natural light pierces through the windows. Gerrit Dou\u2019s paintings are a touchstone for the way the images are framed and Harris cites Peter Weir\u2019s Picnic At Hanging Roc<\/strong><\/em>k and Lucile Hadzihalilovic\u2019s Innocence<\/strong><\/em> as key references for the atmosphere and feel of the film. \u201cInnocence<\/strong><\/em> was a big influence on me when I saw it, and how she tapped into that coming-of-age moment in a female\u2019s life in a really beautiful way and also created a world that you just believe. Picnic At Hanging Rock<\/strong><\/em> is driven by this need for companionship more than lust and that need to be understood. It\u2019s something that is quite beautiful about how Lara and Carmilla relate to one another. That age group, there\u2019s a difference between being understood and understanding, and I think the need here is to be understood. Lara doesn\u2019t mind that she doesn\u2019t understand Carmilla, she just feels understood. I think that\u2019s the beauty at the heart of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that Lara doesn\u2019t have dark carnal desires though. Her burgeoning emotions are placed in visceral erotic dream sequences that occasionally pierce her oppressive reality. \u201cThe dream sequences are so bloody and gory,\u201d exclaims Rae. \u201cThe thing Emily and I were talking about, was that although Lara seems quite innocent and young, she does have this dark curiosity inside her. There\u2019s the dream sequence where I\u2019m being sawn in half so it shows how her desires are transforming from her attraction to a man to Carmilla. It\u2019s her inner turmoil that she can\u2019t express as she\u2019s so repressed and contained by Miss Fontaine.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There’s a wild abandon of natural surroundings in Carmilla<\/strong><\/em> with only natural light piercing through the windows during the day…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An earlier sequence places Lara in charge of her sexual cravings and fully on top of a local magician who she seems to have a crush on. \u201cThe dream you\u2019re thinking about is the one where she almost enters the magician through his chest,\u201d laughs Harris when I suggest how powerful a depiction it is of untamed, penetrative female longing. \u201cShe\u2019s having a sexual awakening; these feelings and thoughts are transferring into her dreams. She\u2019s peeling off the layers of clothes from this magician character that she\u2019s infatuated with. It\u2019s almost as if she can\u2019t get enough of him! Like, peeling his clothes off isn\u2019t enough so she has to keep going deeper and deeper inside of him, which is a dream logic in a sense. It\u2019s not meant to be nasty or mean, it\u2019s actually meant to be visceral and sexual. Lara just wants more, more, more! She literally goes into him!\u201d<\/p>\n

The LGBTQ themes that subtly ripple through the film in this candid exploration of sexuality that shows how desires can shift were not something that Harris was initially focused on. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t something discussed on set, but I\u2019ve noticed that it has come to the fore as the film has been out there with the public, and it definitely has that aspect to it,\u201d Harris says. \u201cI don\u2019t know if this is a good thing or not, but honestly, I was looking at first love and it didn\u2019t matter at the time of writing it what gender that was. It\u2019s set in a time when female sexuality was repressed, Lara\u2019s absolutely isolated and everything she\u2019s learnt comes from Miss Fontaine, who is really trying to stop her from growing up.\u201d The impetus was on the importance of Lara coming-of-age on her own terms. \u201cFirst love doesn\u2019t necessarily come with identifying your sexual orientation. That exploration of first love can come in any shape or form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rae concludes by explaining what Carmilla<\/strong><\/em> means to her, and what she hopes an audience will take away from it: \u201cIt\u2019s okay to be different. People are scared of what they don\u2019t understand or things that are out of the ordinary. Different isn\u2019t bad. This different girl that came into Lara\u2019s life is probably also one of the best things that has ever happened to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carmilla is in cinemas on 16 October and on-demand from 19 October.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We speak to Carmilla director Emily Harris and actress Hannah Rae about taking the 19th Century gothic novella in a new direction…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":116200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,7,6955],"tags":[6987],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Carmilla-3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}