Lara Bauer lives a sheltered but lonely existence, as the daughter of a wealthy English continental landowner, with only her puritanical governess, Miss Fontaine, and a handful of domestic servants for company. She is therefore deeply disappointing when the visit from one of her few friends, the daughter of her father’s old comrade, is postponed, due to the girl’s mysterious illness. Shortly thereafter, a freak carriage accident occurs outside the estate grounds. The only survivor is a striking but silent young lady, whom Bauer’s father will host as she recuperates.
So far, so Le Fanu. Naturally, Lara is drawn to their guest, whom she names “Carmilla,” partly out of desire for companionship. However, there seems to be something deeper to her attraction. Fontaine has her suspicions as to what that might be—and it alarms her tremendously. In fact, we are led to deduce the governess was once involved in her own shocking scandal, so she now enforces strict Calvinist propriety with the zeal of a convert.
The atmosphere and period design of Harris’s Carmilla are first class all the way, but none of the departures from Le Fanu’s original narrative are improvements in anyway. In particular, Fontaine’s judgmental intolerance never feels like a product of her character, but rather serves the film’s message instead. Sexual repression is thoroughly baked into Le Fanu’s source novel and just about all adaptation, post-Dreyer, but the fact that Carmilla has left a string of emaciated corpses in her wake and the presumption she is preying on the girls of the neighboring village are what give the story its suspense and urgency. Rather perversely, Harris largely loses sight of the vampirism, rather turning Le Fanu into D.H. Lawrence.
