By Terry Sherwood
Lovely, deeply sensitive at times illustrating moments of zany French-Canadian humor all are brought forth in director and co-writer Ariane Louis-Seize’s film Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. Stylishly filmed and scored particularly with a touching vocal music scene with long shadows in the work and warm wood tones.
The picture opens with Sasha as a young girl Lilas Rose-Cantin) having a birthday party. The clown gets trapped in the truck during a trick only then in a rather” Undead pan way’ it is revealed that this is a family of vampires. Sasha feels empathy to feed when viewing human suffering and blood, not hunger. Her reluctance holds back her sprouting fangs and must drink from blood baggies; her father (Steve Laplante) is understanding, while her mother (Sophie Cadieux), Cousin Denise (Noémie O’Farrell) and aunt (Marie Brassard) are not so sympathetic.
Move to older Sasha in her late teenage years played by the superb Sara Montpetit. Sasha’s family says she must live with her arty Bohemian cousin Denise. To learn the family ways. One night, Sasha encounters bowling alley worker Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), who is bullied by his peers at school. Life is so bad for him that he is thinking about ending it all.
Louis-Seize and Christine Doyon’s humor can be black-tinged with pathos as the troubled people of the film don’t fit into their societies, Sasha agrees to help Paul realize his “dying wish,” and events and gore ramp up.
Montpetit with long black hair and dark eyes and Bénard who resembles a young French Actor Jean-Louis Trintignant are terrific together in a relationship based on loneliness. As tasty as the original Let the Right One In, the picture is a brilliant story of misfits who find happiness in being special.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person screened as part of The Overlook Film Festival 2024.
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