Short Film: The First Taste

Viewed at the 2020 IVFAF. This was a 2018 short film directed by Amanda Violetto and Kai Pacifico Eng that came in at just under the nine-minute mark. It played with embarrassment around sexuality quite nicely within that short time frame and, of course, was vampire themed.

As the film starts, we meet Lucien (Jan Rajmont) who is carrying a wine glass – though the liquid seems too thick to be red wine. He hands the glass to his mother, Isadora (Daisy Kosmider). He sits by her, biting nervously on his nails, which leads his mother to remark about how many germs are on his hands.

with mother

He does retort, but for the viewer it is his mother who sounds both nagging and domineering. She puts his “hysteria” down to nervousness about the next day. He feels he is being thrown to the wolves; he can’t just go around killing who he likes. Her advice is to go for the sweetest smelling girl – it is a case of pheromones. In the conversation we discover their surname is Bathory. However, when in bed and watching a cowboy movie we see him indulging in onanism whilst biting his own arm and sucking the blood.

meeting Issac

It was a nice way to telegraph to us about his sexual preference. Mother, the next day, can’t remain positive and suggests he not wear his hair the way it is as it is too feminine. With mother’s words ringing in his ears, he spots a girl (Iveta Elizabeth Lit) but his attempt to draw her attention (reaching a book she can’t get to, but silently, and then paying for it whilst offering “creepy stalker vibe”) fails. Sat alone on a park bench he is approached by Isaac (Nikita Pronin) and they begin to hit it off… but what would mother say?

self-biting

The answer is embedded below, and this makes for an amusing look at parental pressure on sexuality and the pressure expectation and unsupportive posturing causes, with a vampire twist that implies that for some parents their child’s sexuality is a bigger issue than them being a killer. At the time of writing I couldn’t find an IMDb page.

The First Taste - FAMU International 2018 from Amanda Violetto on Vimeo.