Venice 2023: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
VENICE There have been scary, violent vampires. There have been depressed vampires. There have been funny vampires. There have been vampires as a metaphor for addiction and homosexuality. There have been vampires in space, in the Far West, in Japan, and in Iran. Now, there is also a vampire who is too empathetic to kill.
From the title alone, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person promises to be a good time, and director and co-writer Ariane Louis-Seize delivers entertainment in spades. For a feature debut, this is as confident and self-assured as they come, taking the many decades of vampire cinema and using tropes and expectations to create something new.
More importantly, Humanist Vampire is a great example of how to make an effective comedy out of very serious and delicate themes without making fun of them. The young protagonist, Sasha (Sara Montpetit), is horribly depressed because everyone in her family can kill and drink human blood without much thought, while she feels all the pain of their victims. On the flip side, there is Paul (Félix-Antoine Bérnard), a teenager with suicidal tendencies due to constant bullying and the feeling that he does not belong in this world.
The chemistry between the two leads is wonderfully awkward and natural, a key ingredient for any successful coming-of-age story. The rest of the cast is also delightful as well, especially Noémie O'Farrell as Sasha's bloodthirsty cousin, with everyone finding the right balance between drama and farce that makes the horror comedy a resounding success. With shades of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Only Lovers Left Alive, and Let The Right One In, Humanist Vampire is bound to become a new genre classic, appealing to both die-hard fans of the sharp-toothed creatures and younger audiences that are experiencing their own dark years in high school. A must-watch in this festival season and a great addition to the canon of dark comedies.