Having sought out the Lady and the Peddler my next stop on the journey inspired by Melissa Weininger’s Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire chapter was this 2017 film directed by Guilhad Emilio Schenker.
Strangely dystopian, this film could be read as a stealth vampire film or a film that plays with the tropes by placing Agnon’s story at the heart of the film in its own right.
The film follows Sophie (Keren Mor) a member of the title’s Fine Literature Club, a female only group who despise the concept of love and whose active members have to find male companions to bring to the Club. There Madam Yankelova (Leah Koenig) reads her favourite Agnon story – the Lady and the Peddler – and then the men are mechanically bound, measured and the lady who brought the most ideal (according to prescribed measurements) wins a trophy. The men are then slaughtered… what becomes of them?
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| hot dogs |
The Agnon story hints that they are then eaten, but we do not see that – we do, however, see a kitchen producing large numbers of hot dogs (presumably human). We also discover that Sophie’s refrigerator and cupboards are practically bare and this brings the words of Agnon’s Lady to mind, “But whatever food she tried to eat she would throw up, for she had already forgotten the science of eating ordinary human food, as it was her practice to eat the flesh of her husbands whom she slaughtered and to drink their blood”.
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| Madam Yankelova presides |
Sophie has 98 trophies and, as the film opens, she wins trophy number 99 – though it is almost accidentally and she has not won a trophy in a long time. To get to 100 would mean she would join the ranks of the House of Lordesses, which is described as an “eternal membership”, though the use of eternal might be hyperbole or a vampiric reward – the film does not say. Her main rival is Lola (Ania Bukstein), a younger woman who has quickly built up her trophy tally.
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| Sophie and Lola, rivals |
Too much failure and Sophie will be relegated to cleaning and sanitation – a demotion where one must serve club members and clean up after club meetings (and prepare hot dogs). Sophie’s friend Hannah (Hana Laslo) was in cleaning and sanitation but has run away (and fallen in love). The club is looking to find and punish her and have Lola watching Sophie as they assume the friend will contact her. Sophie has also met a man, Yossef (Yiftach Klein), interested in Agnon’s work and fate seems to be conspiring to make her actually fall in love with him.
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| Sophie and Yosef |
The film itself is a slow burn, with an air of fantastique meets Kafka to it. If you are unfamiliar with the Agnon story then the cannibalism hinted at might be missed and certainly the vampirism would not be noticed. Whether they are vampires, with 100 victims bestowing eternity, actually cannibals or simply a club of literature reading serial killers is down to interpretation. The imdb page is here.
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