HUMANIST VAMPIRE SEEKING CONSENTING SUICIDAL PERSON reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Ariane Louis-Seize
Stars: Sara Montpetit, Felix-Antoine Benard, Noemei O’Farrell, Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, Marie Brassard, Gabriel-Antoine Roy.
What a great title! Evocative, yet strange enough to whet the appetite for what is essentially a blend of horror, black comedy, teen romance and coming of age tale.
Vampire films have been a staple of the cinema for over a century with classics like Nosferatu, Dracula, the Hammer Horror films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing through to the YA teen vampires of the Twilight series. The quirky Montreal set Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person adds fresh twist to the popular vampire genre as it depicts the relationship between Sasha, a sensitive vampire who is reluctant to taste human blood, and Paul, an introverted teen who is bullied at school and at work.
Sasha (played by Sara Montpetit, from Falcon Lake, etc) is the youngest child in a family of vampires – and even though she is 62 years of age she still has the body and desires of a teenager. But due to a traumatic incident involving a hired clown at a birthday party (that eventually becomes nourishment for the family) she is reluctant to taste human blood. Instead, she gets her nourishment from baggies of blood. She also prefers to play her music, busking in the streets. She describes herself as a “humanist vampire.”
Her father (Steve Laplante) is sympathetic towards her, but her mother (Sophie Cadieux) is less forgiving and pushes her to follow the family tradition. Eventually the family cut off her blood supply and offload Sasha to her more experienced and sanguine cousin Denise (Noemie O’Farrell) hoping that she can bring along her development into a full-blooded blood sucker.
One night she spies the depressed teenager Paul (Felix-Antoine Benard, from tv series The Wall, etc) who is standing on the roof of the bowling alley where he works, contemplating suicide. A friendship develops between these two loners when they connect at a suicide support group. They enter into a pact. She helps Paul develop the confidence to strike back against those who have bullied him in the past in return for becoming her willing virginal victim.
Both Montpetit and Benard develop a strong chemistry that makes the relationship between their characters believable. Montpetit brings a dour, almost morbid quality to her performance as the reluctant vampire while suffusing her character with a vulnerability. Benard is full of neurotic energy and twitches. O’Farrell brings comic energy to her performance.
This film marks the feature directorial debut for Canadian director Ariane Louis-Seize, who has a handful of short films to her credit. The script, written by Louis-Seize and Christine Doyon taps into some of the tropes of the genre but also forges its own path. Offering up a fresh take on the concept of vampires living amongst us the film also shares some thematic connections to films like Let The Right One In, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and even Hal Ashby’s offbeat Harold And Maude. Much of the film takes place in dark locations and in gloomy, moody lighting, and it has been atmospherically shot by her regular cinematographer Shawn Pavliz.
The stylish production design from Ludovic Dufresne, especially for Denise’s lair with meat hooks as an integral part of its industrial decor, adds to the film. And Louis-Seize employs a vibrant and interesting colour scheme to reinforce the film’s mood – the city streets are dark and menacing, the bowling alley where Paul works is bathed in blue neon lighting, while Sasha’s bedroom is suffused with blood red lighting.
★★★☆
