4/10
Albert Serra's first two movies, Honor de Cavaleria and Birdsong, are among my favorites, retelling the journeys of Don Quixote and the 3 Wise Men respectively. Story of My Death features two more historical characters, Casanova and Dracula. Like his previous two, Story of My Death is very slow and very long (about 3 hours). Unlike his other two, it features a lot of dialogue - this is a hideous miss on Serra's part. Casanova takes up the first 2 hours of the movie, and it's a slog - annoyingly reciting Serra's lousy speeches on women, religion, history, as well as eating food forever, laughing like an idiot, having sex like an idiot, and taking a straining dump. He's a terrible character and the movie is only slightly saved by the appearance of Dracula and the threat of something - anything - happening. If you lopped off the first hour entirely, you might convince me that this is a good movie. As it is, it's borderline unwatchable.
The one "new" thing Serra did get right was the music - there are about 4 music cues in the movie (as opposed to none in the other 2, by my memory) and they're all exquisite. But as far as branching out into dialogue and conversations - keep em mute if this is the best you can do.
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