You guys, I don't think Luc Besson has actually read Bram Stoker's Dracula. But I am positive he's seen Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, and I'm pretty sure he thinks that movie was a faithful adaptation of the book, since in more than one interview he insists the original novel is a love story (it's not). Luc Besson's Dracula: A Love Tale is such a blatant rip-off of Francis Ford Coppola's 1991 film, Besson should just call it a remake before he gets sued.
Like in Coppola's film, Dracula (Caleb Landry Jones) begins his eternal life as a prince who rejects God after the death of his wife, and then spends hundreds of years looking for her reincarnation; he also has an elaborate white bouffant hairdo and pale, wrinkled skin when he's visited by solicitor Johnathan Harker (Ewens Abid); when he see's that Harker's fiancee, Mina (Zoë Bleu) looks like his long lost love, he ventures to Paris (instead of London), dons a top hat, and seduces her, though this time not via mind control, but instead via some...magic perfume??
This Dracula does have one thing Coppola's doesn't, and that's an army of animated gargoyles that act as Dracula's personal minions. It's also got Christoph Waltz as a vampire-hunting priest, which puts the actor in both a Frankenstein and a Dracula movie within the span of one year. (Sadly, I don't see him in the cast list for the upcoming Mummy movie.)
Being unoriginal is bad enough, but Dracula: A Love Tale is also one of the flattest and ugliest films I've seen in a while. Scenes are too often brightly lit, with deep focus normally seen in movies shot on older video cameras. I will give it this: some of the costumes, of which there are many, are fine. I particularly liked the completely impractical veil Elisabeta wears as she's attempting to flee capture near the beginning of the film.
Frankly, it's surprising Besson is still allowed to make films, since it seems like he's gotten away with some pretty horrific things. So the fact that he's made a terrible movie that is essentially guilty of the crime of copyright infringement definitely tracks.
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