Lorelei is a tender love story about a 37 year-old novelist and the young girl he marries. More than just a May-December romance, the story explores the fragile and complex alliance between a writer’s sense of identity, and artistic passion. When Catul Bogdan feels he’s lost his intellectual edge as professor and writer, mysterious letters begin arriving, signed "Lorelei" and provoke an unexpected chain of events.
Translated from the rich Moldavian prose of Ionel Teodoreanu, and adapted for film, Lorelei portrays the bittersweet irony of love betrayed by the very inspiration that creates it.
SYNOPSIS
Catul Bogdan enjoys a successful, eccentric life as one of the premier writers in mid-1920s Romania. Though admired for his sensitive treatment of women in his artistic life, he is unhappy until he catches a glimpse of two young companions traveling on the same train as his, one summer afternoon. They meet a second time when he takes a teaching assignment in Galati, where Lucica Novleanu is his student. After four days, they decide to marry and move back to Iasi. In the few years that follow, though mutually devoted to one another Bogdan succumbs to a crisis as a writer, and slowly withdraws from his wife. Lucica contrives to inspire her husband by creating a muse. A talented writer in her own right, she composes mysterious letters that she then sends to her childhood friend Gabriela, who transcribes them before sending them on to Bogdan. The ruse is successful in that Bogdan rediscovers his purpose, however the situation becomes complicated when Gabriela comes to visit. Moments before her arrival, Lucica suffers an appendicitis attack and dies two days later. Gabriela takes advantage of the grief-stricken Bogdan, by allowing him to believe that she is indeed, "Lorelei"—his only remaining consolation. They marry a year later, but much to Gabriela’s disappointment Bogdan has all but renounced his work. With only her social status as Mrs Bogdan to sustain her, Gabriela quickly tires of her home life and seeks outside distractions with people her own age. Bogdan, meanwhile rediscovers his love for his dead wife, and begins a new novel in her memory. As Bogdan drifts further and further into his private world Gabriela becomes involved with a young engineer. When a letter accidentally finds its way into Bogdan’s hands, he becomes suspicious, and searches through Gabriela’s trunk in the attic. To his shock he finds the "Lorelei" letters his wife composed and sent to Gabriela, realizing too late that, that Lucica, and not Gabriela was the mysterious muse that gave him inspiration.
THE ISTOVA WOMAN an original screenplay
Veronica Istova’s stigmata is not the religious kind; it is something altogether different—stranger, if that’s possible. It might have something to do with her unusual birth, since her life didn’t begin with the actual delivery. She was, in fact, a stillborn Siamese twin, joined to her sister by a smooth bundle of tissue at the base of their skulls.
Her mother, a counter-intelligence agent, falls in love with an American entrepreneur coerced into covert service in Romania, by the CIA in the 1960s. When her pregnancy reaches term, the attending physician surgically separates the dead twin from the live one; at that instant Veronica draws her first breath. Realizing the implications of the rare birth, the doctor conspires with the Securitate – Romania’s infamous secret police – to conduct private research on the resurrected infant. In exchange, the President’s wife, a pseudo-scientist, would get credit for the work, and the Securitate could insure the cooperation of both parents, guarding even against their potential defection to the West. Meanwhile, Veronica’s twin, Emilia, is raised as an only child who becomes a celebrated dancer in a national ensemble. For twenty years her family is unaware that Veronica even exists. Then, one day, she disappears.
She arrives mysteriously at a private clinic in Austria, where Julia, an eccentric psychiatrist discovers her bizarre condition. Intrigued, but desperate, Julia calls in Peter, her colleague and former lover to consult on the case, particularly the stigmata. The episodes begin with an electrical surge of some sort, that make Veronica’s moist skin fizz like "charged" seltzer. They end with unexplained bleeding from healthy, unblemished tissue over an area of her chest, which when dressed, leaves detailed impressions in the gauze. What no one knows, not even Veronica, is that each attack seems precipitated by something her sister, Emilia is experiencing; it is as if Veronica were still connected to her twin. While the blood imprints are clues to Veronica’s identity, the mystery doesn’t unravel until Julia’s son, a concert violinist, meets, and falls in love with Emilia.
As the Romanian Revolution of 1989 looms, the Securitate quickly presses Veronica’s father to agree to assassinate President Ceausescu, by holding his wife and daughter hostage. To guarantee his full compliance, they also reveal to him for the first time that he has another daughter—Emilia’s twin sister. Then they kidnap Julia’s son to compel the return of the Istova woman. In the complex chain of events that ultimately brings the principle characters together when Veronica and Emilia meet at last, no one could have anticipated the shocking consequences. And as the phenomenal circumstances of their uncanny birth might suggest, only one of them could survive.
The Istova Woman began as a novel I wrote in 1987. After unsuccessful attempts at publishing, I decided to adapt it to film. Currently I am seeking a producer for my project.