MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*
The first time I watched this softcore erotic-horror item, I found it largely formless, popular only because of TV-star Alyssa Milano put her goods on display. Now, even though parts of EMBRACE are as derivative as a Harlequin romance, the flick feels a bit like a semi-complete jigsaw puzzle.
Though most of the film takes place on a 1990s college campus, a prologue establishes the centuries-old bonafides of The Vampire (Martin Kemp). The bloodsucker never uses a name as such, though centuries ago his human self was "a nobleman." He meets a lover, also unnamed, surrounded by very banal romantic imagery (woman riding on a white charger to meet her swain, reclining in a glade strewn with red blossoms). However, after the woman, a royal maid, has sex with the man, she departs-- and out of the forest come three naked vamp-girls. They perform one un-vampiric ritual-- placing around the guy's neck a chain with an ankh attached-- before gang-fanging him and making him a bloodsucker too. Why do forest-vamps venerate ankhs? That's one of the puzzle pieces, though much later a minor character comments that the Egyptian symbol represents "sexual powers." So in the EMBRACE universe vampires are nothing but carnal sexual desire.
The scene shifts to that nineties college, where The Vampire plots to seduce Charlotte (Milano), the first reincarnation of the nameless maid the vamp once loved. The script can't be bothered to say why the near-immortal nobleman didn't make his still-living love into one of his kind; that would distract from the main scenario. Charlotte is due to turn 18 in three days, which presents the Vampire with a ticking clock. He wants to turn her while she's still virginal, and she's apparently keeping her boyfriend Chris at a distance because she has some ambivalence about having sex before 18. There's a brief remark about Charlotte having been raised at a nunnery, but the root of her ambivalence to sex is not explored. The fact that Charlotte's father is not mentioned might suggest, in a more nuanced movie, that Charlotte suffers from a father-complex, which the Vampire is going to exacerbate-- though again, too many missing puzzle-pieces to render speculation fruitful.
The Vampire also has some rules: he can save himself from an "endless sleep" if he turns this reincarnation of a lost love (which in itself makes the heroine more of a daughter-figure). But he can't attack her; he can only persuade by sending her hallucinatory images. Oh, and an ankh, which Charlotte starts wearing in place of a cross that Chris gave his reluctant paramour. Though the Vampire's mostly seen on his own, he knows some fellow bloodsuckers, as he sends a seductress named Marika (Jennifer Tilly) to cause Chris to sway from the course of true love. He doesn't give up on love, but Charlotte gets more in touch with her Inner Tart.
In the end, true love does win, though none of the three players in the triangle are interesting (while the support-cast is worse). Kemp's been critiqued for an underwhelming performance, but he really had almost nothing to work with, given this ragtag conception of a vampire. Charlotte's not much better, but she does function as the story's eminent presence: sort of a combination of the two females from Stoker's DRACULA. She's sensible, wait-for-marriage Mina getting in touch with her lubricious Lucy. Of course most of the sex-imagery is banal too, but one tends to expect that in DTV offerings.
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