Nadja Nadja Your Comments About This Movie!
August 1996
A comment on M. Sullivan's review of the film NADJA. While I personally found the film less than fun (and, frankly, less than interesting), I do agree that it was 'impressively atmospheric' -- from beginning to end. Almereyda's NADJA successfully imitated the look and pacing of such works as Cocteau's ORPHEE and LA BELLE ET LA BETE. One scene, in which Nadja walks/floats against a backdrop printed in negative (actually, the actress is stationary, it is the background that moves), is taken right out of Cocteau's reworking of the Orpheus myth (the scene when the title character descends into the underworld to reclaim his bride). While one could make the argument of filmic intertextuality, or perhaps even parody, though the film never appears to rise to that level, it seems more like uninspired imitation, actually bordering on plagiarism in the director's unacknowledged borrowing of the title NADJA from Andre Breton's seminal work, as well as his quoting verbatim an entire passage from Breton without even mentioning the source or its author in the credits. But I suppose the unimaginative, irresponsible direction is more than outweighed by the 'hip' image the film projects, the sporadically 'wacky' characters and dialogue, and the 'innovative' use of alternative technologies (the f.p. toy camera). How sad.
-- G.B.