Domnisoara Christina (2013) – review

Director: Alexandru Maftei

Release date: 2013

Contains spoilers

I recently discovered the existence of Mircea Eliade’s novella ‘Miss Christina’ (1936) and my post on the previous film version of it contains details of how I discovered this story of strigoï in Romania. Like the previous film, this is apparently fairly novella accurate and there is a version (at time of writing) on YouTube with hardcoded English subtitles – noting that the subtitles translate strigoï as “zombie” for some reason.

Like the 1992 release, the filmmakers have aimed for an uncanny feel rather than full on horror. However, there are some distinct differences between the versions. The character Simina (Ioana Sandu) reverts back to being a child rather than a teen. The sexualised scene (involving a kiss and some dominance language) involving her, from the novella, is done in such a way that it feels sinister but not exploitative. There is also a much wider view of the impact of the strigoï on the locality, rather than just the family.

The film starts at the Moscu manor in winter, and as the camera enters the house we see it is wrecked by the fire that will rage through it at the climax of the film. In the broken house is a man, with a small campfire from which he retrieves charcoal and looks to continue the drawing on the wall of the portrait he is trying to render. There are cracks in the wall and an empty frame propped against it and we can assume this is Egor Paschievici (Tudor Istodor) trying to redraw, from memory, the portrait of Miss Christina (Dumitrescu Anastasia), he destroyed.

on the train

The film jumps back to the main timeline of the narrative and Egor is on a train travelling with Sanda (Ioana Anastasia Anton). They are going to her family estate for a visit. Once there they meet another guest, Professor Nazarie (Ovidiu Ghinita), and Sanda’s mother Mrs Moscu (Maia Morgenstern). Before they sit for dinner, we see that Mrs Moscu feels weak, staggering a little at one point, and Sanda’s young sister Simina, demands the seat next to her mother that Nazarie was going to take, and he allows it. During the meal we witness Mrs Moscu’s obsessional eating habits.

Ioana Sandu as Simina

Nazarie visits Egor in his room before retiring and mentions a drought in the village (despite a proximity to the Danube). The next day, a romantic moment between Sanda and Egor is broken when she sees Simina walking near by and it starts an underlying theme of the younger sister somehow being a danger to the older. At a meal thereafter, Simina says she dreamed of Aunt Christina and this introduces the strigoï to the story – who was Mrs Moscu’s murdered older sister. As she describes the dream she suggests Christina has lamented the fact that Sanda has begun to forgot her. I won’t particularly go blow by blow through the plot as it is pretty darn close to the previous film but there are some motifs to draw out.

the portrait

When they are taken to see Christina’s portrait it is mentioned as a Mairea (I assume referencing George Demetrescu Mirea) and Egor is dismissive of his work until he sees it. However, having complemented it – due to the subject – we see a mist swirl within a perfume bottle. I took this as indicative of the presence of the strigoï in an immaterial form. He is then told about her history, through the Professor, but as well as her cruelty and murder at the hand of her lover, jealous after she consented to be raped (as much of an oxymoron as that sounds) by peasants during the 1907 peasant uprising, he also mentions that her body was never found and the villagers believe her to be strigoï and responsible for the death of animals and sickness in local children.

the bullet hole

This is followed by his first dream of her – after a warning within the dream – it is interesting that she tells him not to believe the terrible things Nazarie has told him (though much later he manages to run his finger over the still bleeding bullet hole in her back). It is also telling that she removes a glove and when he awakens it is there (although that is shown as waking from a dream into another dream) and then when he actually awakens, Nazarie enters the room and he asks about the smell – there is the scent of violets, her signature scent (and we can assume the perfume bottle earlier was violets), proving she had been there.

the three ladies

In the previous review I mentioned that, in a non-fiction volume, Mircea Eliade had split strigoï into living and dead categories (commonly referred to as strigoï vii and strigoï mort). There is indication that, as well as the three female characters being connected to the strigoï mort (Miss Christina), they may also be strigoï vii. This seems true of Mrs Moscu, who obsessively eats, is unnecessarily cruel (we see her casually snap the neck of a bird) and has a psychic connection to her sister (which I’ll come back to) and Simina who can be read as being connected to her aunt and strigoï herself, and/or possessed by her aunt at times. Fairly early into the narrative, as Sanda becomes ill, Egor calls Simina a witch and warns her from hurting her sister. He grabs her arm and she pulls herself away, at which point Egor collapses in considerable pain (presumably magically inflicted). Also, when Simina seems to dominate and kiss Egor later, the kiss is clearly a bite drawing blood.

Egor's stake

This version of the story shows a greater connection between Sanda and her aunt, though her age, as mentioned by Simina, and perhaps her time in Bucharest has weakened the connection. She seems to be feeding her aunt (and is diagnosed as anaemic) but we see her stood awaiting Christina until her mother (connected to the strigoï mort) tells her Christina will not visit that night. One thing that felt a little more apparent in this was that when Egor returns to the house, having been bitten by Simina, he has lost time and the doctor (Ioan Ionescu) attending Sanda says he saw him taking a moonlit walk with a woman (which he can’t recall and was likely Christina). Interestingly the film draws a direct line between the fate of the strigoï mort (who must be killed by metal stake through the heart – though Egor does assault the portrait also) and the two living sisters.

Dumitrescu Anastasia as Miss Christina

It is hard to judge the two films against each other. Both aim for the unheimlich and both have a languid pace. I thought this showed more of the supernatural and I liked the way it reached further, into the impact on the village, at least in reportage. One telling difference was in the performance of Egor, Tudor Istodor played him as a rather detached character (be that through his arrogance at times or through supernatural influence at others) and that worked but not as well as the smouldering and intense performance by Adrian Pintea in the previous version. The wider communication of the supernatural gives this the edge for me. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.