Sasha has never felt at ease with her vampire heritage, especially since her family ate the clown hired to perform at her sixth birthday party. Years later she’s a mopey teenager (played by the emerging Québécoise star Sara Montpetit) who still hasn’t got her fangs and refuses to feed, save for the blood bags from her parent’s fridge. Her concerned family consult a doctor. The diagnosis is grim: Sasha has a neurological disorder that causes compassion for humans.
She’s packed off to live with her no-nonsense cousin Denise (Noémie O’Farrell), who attempts to teach Sasha how to pick up guys at bars (for blood-draining purposes) to no avail.
The depressed young vampire is contemplating suicide (by human burger) when she encounters a human boy in a similar state of despair. Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), an outcast relentlessly bullied at high school and the bowling alley where he works, offers himself to Sasha as food. That gesture coalesces into puppy love as Paul, buoyed by impending doom, takes on his various tormentors.
Will Sasha ever get her fangs? Or will she settle for the cute boy?
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Ariane Louis-Seize’s debut feature rightly won the award for best director in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar of Venice International Film Festival in 2022. Her cinematographer, Shawn Pavlin, amplifies the adolescent gloom with tight, claustrophobic framing. Thierry Bourgault-D’Amico’s eclectic electro soundtrack adds exciting flourishes.
The deadpan tone recalls the drollery of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and What We Do in the Shadows. Montpetit channels the teen angst of a young Winona Ryder. The effect reframes this dark comedy as a species-swapped, harder-edged, very French Edward Scissorhands.
On Mubi from Friday, October 11th
