Fangs are out in this Québécois movie starring Sara Montpetit. Photo / supplied
Fangs are out in this Québécois movie starring Sara Montpetit. Photo / supplied
Sometimes it’s hard to be a vampire. Especially if your parents expect you to be out hunting for the family dinner, but your fangs won’t come through because you’re more prone to experiencing compassion than blood lust.
This is the situation for tortured teen Sasha (Sara Montpetit) in this charming,witty Québécois black comedy set in suburban Montreal, which posits the bloodsuckers as normal folks who simply suffer from abnormal, somewhat antisocial, eating habits.
Sasha’s parents are despairing of their timid daughter’s inability to pop her sanguinary cherry. Cousin Denise routinely brings unsuspecting young men home for deadly one-night stands but Sasha recoils from the idea of killing poor, innocent humans – she’d rather feast on poutines than plasma.
One night, she spies melancholy Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard) entertaining suicidal thoughts atop a roof. She later follows him to a support group for the sick-of-living and the two bond over a shared connection which might just solve both of their problems.
Talented Canadian film-maker Ariane Louis-Seize impresses with her feature debut, which shows not just a clever imagination but considerable aesthetic flair. Her movie looks and feels like an anti-Amélie (cute, quiet, dark-haired heroine with awkward hobby meets cute, quiet, awkward boy with no friends), and the script plants Louis-Seize’s would-be lovers in a matter-of-factly hybrid world where vampires live and feed among us.
There’s a hilarious scene in which Sasha’s parents drag her to an undead medical professional who diagnoses her with an excess of compassion (“She’s impaired!” they lament), and human Paul seems largely unfazed by Sasha’s advanced age or restricted diet.
A decade ago, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s terrific What We Do In The Shadows gave Kiwis an appetite for straight-faced comedies about fanged fiends and their familiars. Humanist Vampire has a similarly tongue-in-cheek tone as Sasha and Paul decide to tie up a few loose ends before he sacrifices himself to her cause.
The result is a sweetly lighthearted look at the dark side, and a pondering about how one’s dying wish might just transform another’s life.
