Luc Besson: "I'm against the notion of toxic love, love is something beautiful and pure."

SilosThe Professional, Nikita, The Fifth Element, Lucy... Luc Besson (Paris, 1959) has been demonstrating for decades now that European cinema can have commercial ambition and compete head to head with Hollywood. With Dracula, which he presented this Wednesday at the Sitges Festival, the French director approaches Bram Stoker's novel, greatly enhancing its romantic dimension, moving the action from London to Paris and introducing digital gargoyles that the Prince of Darkness has as servants in his castle. It is the first major production released by Besson after a judge declared him innocent in 2023 of the rape complaint filed in 2018 by actress Sand Van Roy; later, anonymous accusations of sexual misconduct by eight women were added on the French investigation website Mediapart.

Dracula is the fictional character with the most audiovisual adaptations, more than 500 according to the Guinness Book of RecordsWhat attracts you to the character, where is the key to success?

— I'm not too interested in the character. What fascinates me is Beauty and the Beast, and Dracula is the beast. I'm more interested in the romance of the book. A man who is capable of waiting 400 years just to say goodbye to his wife—that's the story that fascinates me. And I wanted to tell it now because nowadays people don't even wait ten minutes. It's a way of reminding everyone that we come from love. This man only loves one woman, no one else, and he loves her forever. It's wonderful. So Dracula is just the background.

The film that put the spotlight on the romanticism of Dracula was Coppola's adaptation, one of the most successful and popular. Have you tried in any way to avoid the shadow that film still casts?

— I don't care. It doesn't work that way. If you meet a woman and fall in love, you won't adapt your way of loving her to the fact that she was married before. When it comes to a character or a film, I don't care. It's been 40 years since I saw a film about Dracula. The last one I saw was Coppola's, which was... 32 years ago. And before that, Christopher Lee played Dracula, but only for 10 minutes because he scared me too much. I'm not familiar with this universe; I didn't want to make a horror film, just tell a love story.

Coppola joked about Gary Oldman's casting as Dracula, saying he'd chosen "the ugliest actor" of all the candidates. His Dracula, Caleb Landry-Jones, is a great actor and has a great presence, but his beauty isn't canonical either.

— Caleb is the most talented actor I've worked with since Gary Oldman. We've already done Dogman (2023), and I wanted to work with him again. That's it. First, I choose a super driver, and then I think about what car to give him. In his case, you can't give him a small car; he needs a big role to unleash his power. And there he has a character who's 25, 80, 200, and 400 years old. He's a warrior, but also a lover. It's a good role for him. You can't make him play a small-town doctor; he can't. He needs power, something big. And of the actors I know, none can do it better.

You're a friend of Gary Oldman. Christoph Waltz is a great Van Helsing, but didn't you consider asking Oldman? Seeing such an iconic Dracula play Van Helsing would have been great.

— I didn't think about it, but it's a fun idea. I still see Gary sometimes; we bump into each other at festivals and airports. I've worked with him three times. Four, because I also produced his film as a director.

Dracula's love for Mina—a predestined love that transcends life and death and even requires sacrifice—is almost a textbook definition of what is understood today as toxic love. Are you concerned that celebrating this love is problematic today?

— So now pure love is toxic [ironic]. Dracula loves a woman he's willing to die for, which is basically what he does in the end. And she's the only woman he loves. So toxic, already.

If it dies for love, it will be something toxic. Toxic to the point of killing you.

— Yes, but it also keeps him alive for 400 years, doesn't it? If I didn't want him, he would have died at 60 and the story would have ended. No, I'm against the notion of toxic love. Love is something beautiful and pure, but society can make it toxic. Yes, society. Let's remember that we are all born from love, and there's nothing toxic about having a child. There's a man and a woman who love one day, and they make you and me. What's toxic about that?

Don't you think some loves and relationships can be toxic?

— Yes, definitely. But there's also a lot of love that isn't. So why focus on toxic love? As if the moment you love too much, you're toxic. Love has been a part of the world for a million years; if it were that toxic, we wouldn't be here.

Returning to Dracula, we're talking about a powerful man over 400 years old who, in his film, uses chemical subjugation to hunt young girls and believes he deserves love. Seen today, it's crying out for a Me Too.

— But the only person he loves is Mina. It doesn't matter if he uses perfume or an ad in the newspaper; he's looking for his wife. He's not interested in the others. He only uses people to find his wife. If I remember correctly, Coppola's Dracula had three nymphs in the castle, but mine didn't. And he uses perfume like music to attract people, bite them, and search for Mina. This is what I love about the character. So I don't see the problem; there's no submission.

Women lose their minds and literally throw themselves at him when they smell this perfume.

— Okay, so we're canceling the perfumes. They shouldn't be sold at airports anymore. So why are they perfumes?

Do you identify with Dracula? Perhaps you admire him?

— I identify with all the characters in my films. I'm a bit like Léon [Jean Reno to The professional], a little bit like Matilda [Natalie Portman in The professional], a little bit Lilou [Milla Jovovich in The fifth element], a little bit Lucy [Scarlett Johansson in Lucy]... There's always a part of me in the characters. Don't ask me which one, because I don't know. And yes, I admire Dracula. It's funny, because right now there's a Dracula mania on TikTok, there are like 80 or 90 tiktoks of Dracula and many women in love with him loving his wife. Many of the comments are: "I wish my man loved me like that." And it's because of the romance. We need some romance these days.

I imagine that romanticism was one of the elements that led him to adapt the French comic book classic Valerian. It was the most expensive European production in history, but it didn't perform as expected at the box office. How did this affect its production company, Europacorp?

— Journalists love to say that Valerian It ruined my production company, but that's not the case. The film made over 250 million at the worldwide box office, and it's still profitable today. The problem came from another part of the company, but not from there. It's true that Valerian It didn't work in the United States, but the production company is good. Or at least better.

Dracula It is the first major production he has shot since ValerianHave you enjoyed working on a budget again?

— This is another misunderstanding journalists have. Nobody comes in the morning with a $100 million briefcase. No, you work with people, and you don't care if it's a big or small film; you focus on the task at hand, whether it's how to get the best out of your actor or your cinematographer. But never look at the budget. ValerianThe special effects cost 30 or 40 million, but I don't see them. You make your plan, they send it to the company, and they come back with the special effects, but I don't know how it works or how much it costs, because I don't see it. And if you have three actors and one earns one, another ten, and another a hundred, the work you do with them is the same. At the beginning of your career, when you don't have money, you suffer on set because you can only do two takes. But after 30 years, I always have the money I need to make the film. And I'm never dry on set; I don't have a chair with my name on it, nor a trailer. I don't have a driver, and I don't give a shit. I only care about the film.

In 2023, he was found not guilty of rape charges…

— I'm not talking about it. Watch the trial and say what you want.

I just wanted to ask you about the impact it's had on your career.

— I don't talk about it. And it's not right for you to ask me this. It's not your job. What you should be asking are questions about movies. [Woman ends interview.]