Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ariane Louis-Seize
Starring: Sara Montpetit, Félix-Antoine Bénard, Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, Noémie O'Farrell
Given its title, you'd be forgiven for thinking
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is
based on the story of Armin Meiwes, the German man who infamously
murdered and ate another man, Bernd Jurgen-Brandes, after the latter
answered a classified ad in which Meiwes requested a consenting victim.
But no, it's a horror-comedy that plays on a similar idea but in a
generally light-hearted fashion.
Like so many movies before it, Ariane Louis-Seize's feature
debut supposes vampires living in the shadows of our world, doing what
they can to survive. The prologue introduces us to a fanged family
living in Montreal. Little Sasha's parents are worried that she hasn't
sprouted her fangs yet. After visiting a vampire dentist they're alarmed
to hear that human suffering invokes compassion, rather than bloodlust,
in Sasha.
Cut to the present day and Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is now a
68-year-old with the appearance of a human teenager. Having spent the
past few decades supplying her with blood, her parents decide it's time
to stop molly-coddling their daughter and force her to find her own
victims. She's sent to live with her older cousin Denise (Noémie O'Farrell), who likes to lure unsuspecting men back to her place before chomping
on their throats. Sasha just can't bring herself to partake, but the
longer she goes without blood the more her tummy rumbles with hunger.
Unable to eat human food, which is fatally poisonous to vampires in this
lore, Sasha is left to gaze longingly through the windows of late night
fast food joints as regular Canadians stuff their faces with
poutine.
Sasha stumbles across a potentially ethical solution when she sees a
teenage boy, Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), contemplating jumping
off a roof. Bullied at school and at the bowling alley where he works,
Paul has decided his pain is too much to bear. When Sasha tracks him
down at a group meeting for the depressed and suicidal, he agrees to
willingly become her first kill.
There are some considerably heavy themes at play in Louis-Seize's film,
primarily that of the thorny subject of assisted suicide, but it never
allows itself to get too dark. As such it's a film that finds itself
trapped in a limbo somewhere between the family friendly fantasia of Tim
Burton and the grittiness of films like Abel Ferrara's
The Addiction and Ana Lily Amirpour's
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. It feels more at ease when it leans toward the former, and
Louis-Seize manages to mine some witty ideas from the over-played
concept of vampirism. There's a devilishly clever bit involving a biting
gone wrong on Denise's part that results in a very annoying frat boy
being accidentally given immortality and ending up living on Denise and
Sasha's couch like an unwanted guest. When Sasha mouths along to a vinyl
copy of Brenda Lee's 'Emotions', it initially seems like she's a young
hipster teen until we remember she's actually 68 and this is the music
of her generation. This detail gives the budding romance between Sasha
and Paul a touch of the Harold and Maudes, but this age gap is something
the film never addresses.
Sasha's initial attempt to claim Paul as her first victim is cleverly
played as though it's a pair of teen lovers' awkward first sexual
encounter, with the nervous Paul gallantly suggesting ways he might make
the process less painful. Unable to go through with it, Sasha makes up a
fake bit of lore concerning a vampire's need to grant their victim a
dying wish before they suck their blood, which leads to a montage of
Paul confronting his various tormentors. The idea of a vampire and her
potential victim bonding romantically over the course of a night before
the sun comes up and she's forced to choose between food and death could
fuel an entire film on its own (it's a shame the title
Before Sunrise is already taken), but it arrives too late
in the narrative here for the film to exploit its potential.
Montpetit, who recently caught our attention with her turn in Charlotte
LeBon's coming of age drama Falcon Lake, is excellent once again here, nailing the anxiety of a vegan vampire.
She comes across as a proper teenage weirdo rather than a pampered young
actress playing goth dress-up. Standing rigid like a sleeping bat or
collapsing from exhaustion, her portrayal of a bloodsucker who finds
life draining has clearly had some thought put into it. While she
doesn't make being a vampire look like much fun, I imagine a lot of
teenage girls who watch Humanist Vampire will find
Montpetit's angsty vamp both beguiling and inspirational.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person plays at
The Overlook Film Festival
from April 5th.
