‘Dracula: A Love Tale’ Is a classic revitalized for the romantics

Review by Autumn, Library Specialist

Dracula is a French film directed and written by Luc Besson starring Caleb Landry Jones, Zoë Bleu, and Christoph Waltz. Released in France under the title Dracula: A Love Tale in July 2025, this movie garnered well-deserved hype across the globe. It finally made its way to US theaters in February 2026. 

We start in 1480 Romania with a montage showing us Prince Vlad of Wallachia, Count Dracula, and his wife, Elisabeta, enjoying themselves as a couple.

Then war comes knocking at their door. *knock knock* It’s the Ottomans. “Subscribe to Islam”, they said. “No,” said Vlad. Vlad tells his priest to ask God to spare his wife, but it’s not that simple. Elisabeta dies before Vlad can reach her, and he spirals. He performs an act of blasphemy by killing the priest in his castle’s chapel. From there on, he is cursed by God to never die, which means he’ll never be able to join Elisabeta in heaven.

Dracula spends the first several years mourning his wife and wishing for death. After some time, he realizes that pure souls can be reincarnated, so he begins his search. Dracula soon comes to understand that finding Elisabeta will be harder than he thought. He spends a century developing a perfume to attract women to him, something he hopes will aid in his search for her. After some time, Dracula once again loses hope, and decides to create other vampires to search for his lost love.

It is now 1889 and we are in Paris, France where a doctor at a mental hospital has called upon an occultist priest (Christoph Waltz) to take a look at a patient that was brought in recently. The patient is said to have attacked a bishop at her wedding, something out of character for her, which landed her in the mental hospital. The priest realizes that the woman, Maria, is a vampire, a creature he has been hunting for years. She tells him that her master is coming, and he is looking for his princess. The doctor and the priest look into Maria and find that she has a picture of Elisabeta tucked away in a journal. Maria’s friend, Mina, comes to check on Maria, and the doctor and priest realize that she is the reincarnation of the princess that Maria’s master is looking for. 

Meanwhile, a Paris-based solicitor, Jonathan Harker, visits Dracula’s castle in hopes that Dracula will sell a piece of property he owns in Paris. Dracula welcomes Jonathan in, but Jonathan oversteps and Dracula captures him and threatens to kill him. Jonathan convinces Dracula to tell him his story, and then asks to be spared, as he is in love and is to be wed upon his return. Jonathan tells Dracula he has a locket that has a picture of his fiancée, which Dracula takes. Dracula realizes that Jonathan’s fiancée, Mina, is his reincarnated love, Elisabeta. He finally found her. Dracula revitalizes himself and makes his way to Paris to find his wife.

I absolutely love the tone, characters, story, and general vibe of the movie. At times the movie can be a little goofy, sometimes quite campy, but altogether it is, at its core, a love story. This Dracula is unique in the fact that it tells you that he is a monster while also reminding you that he is still just a man. A man who lost his greatest love too soon. A man desperate enough to forsake his god to find his love again. I’m a romantic, so I love when a classic gets a romantic spin. I loved The Shape of Water, for example. So when I heard about this movie a year ago, I was frothing at the mouth to watch it. The movie starts by showing us how very human Vlad is, then shows us the loss of his humanity, before ultimately bringing it full circle as he regains his humanity at the end. Throughout the movie, we truly see how love can change a person. Out of all of the Dracula movies (and not-so-Dracula movies) that I have watched, this one is by far my favorite.