Director: Denise Castro
Release date: 2016
Contains spoilers
Release date: 2016
Contains spoilers
I have previously reviewed the Denise Castro film Drácula de Denise Castro and I had heard of this film when I did, but the Salvación DVD seemed to be (according to Amazon) without English subs. It stayed on my radar (and wishlist) and recently appeared cheap as a second-hand copy and so I ordered it for the collection and, to my delight, it actually does have English subs. It also has a couple of vampire shorts by Castro that I’ll cover separately.
This is a very different film to the to the other feature, which was very meta. This is actually a fairly standard narrative, which works well.
We start with Cris (Marina Botí) who has got home carrying a hot chocolate when she collapses. Later her mom, Ana (Laura Yuste), gets home and finds her on the ground. When Cris come round she is in a hospital bed with a drip. Ana says that she had fainted and the drip is giving her medicine. Cris wants to leave and Ana promises soon but then a doctor takes her out to speak to her. Cris has a congenital heart condition and it has not fixed itself and she needs to remain in hospital for further tests (which will later confirm that she needs an operation).
That night, with Ana asleep in the room, Cris gets her cardigan and bag and sneaks out. She notices pills on the corridor floor that roll away, unnaturally, and she follows them down the corridor to a room that has restricted access. She goes in and sees a young man (Ricard Balada, Drácula de Denise Castro) in bed. They speak and he tells her that he is a vampire (later he will give his name as Victor). Just a comment on age, Cris is drawn as thirteen years old and looks around that age. Victor, it is suggested, is the same age but actor Ricard Balada looks the young adult he is. Whilst their romance is chaste it feels slightly off.
So, is Victor a vampire? His father (Francesc Pagès), met towards the end of the film, suggests his son is anaemic but calls himself a vampire. We, however, see powers. When a night nurse comes in he hides Cris by telekinetically lifting her to the ceiling and we also see him take over the mind of the same nurse and make her take a sleeping pill. We see him drink blood from the blood bank and also from a sleeping girl, who does not wake up whilst he feeds. However the film can be interpreted in a couple of ways, one might be he is really a vampire, another that the more supernatural events are a shared delusion or fantasy by the pair and it is acting like a vampire coupled with a belief in them.
The film works towards Cris having her operation and, in some respects, Victor is the pathway to escape her anxieties – anxieties exaggerated by the well-meaning but inciteful older cancer patient Berta (Alzira Gómez). There is not much in the way of lore – blood drinking and immortality (a suggestion undermined by his illness), a sharing of blood being needed to turn and we do see burning in sunlight but within a dream sequence. Cris, in some respects, is made a vampire by her operation – her heart stopping during surgery meaning she is dead and returns, blood needed during surgery is taking blood from another.
Aside from the inappropriateness of the perceived age difference (despite, as I say, the story suggesting them as the same age) this is a well-constructed drama (and it is a drama, not a horror at all). The acting is believable, the story makes a narrative sense and the more outlandish aspects (of being a vampire) work in that contested space of interpretation (of him being what he suggests and of it being a shared delusion/fantasy). This was a solid little movie. 6 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon UK
This is a very different film to the to the other feature, which was very meta. This is actually a fairly standard narrative, which works well.
 |
| fainted |
We start with Cris (Marina Botí) who has got home carrying a hot chocolate when she collapses. Later her mom, Ana (Laura Yuste), gets home and finds her on the ground. When Cris come round she is in a hospital bed with a drip. Ana says that she had fainted and the drip is giving her medicine. Cris wants to leave and Ana promises soon but then a doctor takes her out to speak to her. Cris has a congenital heart condition and it has not fixed itself and she needs to remain in hospital for further tests (which will later confirm that she needs an operation).
 |
| meeting Victor |
That night, with Ana asleep in the room, Cris gets her cardigan and bag and sneaks out. She notices pills on the corridor floor that roll away, unnaturally, and she follows them down the corridor to a room that has restricted access. She goes in and sees a young man (Ricard Balada, Drácula de Denise Castro) in bed. They speak and he tells her that he is a vampire (later he will give his name as Victor). Just a comment on age, Cris is drawn as thirteen years old and looks around that age. Victor, it is suggested, is the same age but actor Ricard Balada looks the young adult he is. Whilst their romance is chaste it feels slightly off.
 |
| hiding on the ceiling |
So, is Victor a vampire? His father (Francesc Pagès), met towards the end of the film, suggests his son is anaemic but calls himself a vampire. We, however, see powers. When a night nurse comes in he hides Cris by telekinetically lifting her to the ceiling and we also see him take over the mind of the same nurse and make her take a sleeping pill. We see him drink blood from the blood bank and also from a sleeping girl, who does not wake up whilst he feeds. However the film can be interpreted in a couple of ways, one might be he is really a vampire, another that the more supernatural events are a shared delusion or fantasy by the pair and it is acting like a vampire coupled with a belief in them.
 |
| feeding on blood |
The film works towards Cris having her operation and, in some respects, Victor is the pathway to escape her anxieties – anxieties exaggerated by the well-meaning but inciteful older cancer patient Berta (Alzira Gómez). There is not much in the way of lore – blood drinking and immortality (a suggestion undermined by his illness), a sharing of blood being needed to turn and we do see burning in sunlight but within a dream sequence. Cris, in some respects, is made a vampire by her operation – her heart stopping during surgery meaning she is dead and returns, blood needed during surgery is taking blood from another.
 |
| Ana and Chris |
Aside from the inappropriateness of the perceived age difference (despite, as I say, the story suggesting them as the same age) this is a well-constructed drama (and it is a drama, not a horror at all). The acting is believable, the story makes a narrative sense and the more outlandish aspects (of being a vampire) work in that contested space of interpretation (of him being what he suggests and of it being a shared delusion/fantasy). This was a solid little movie. 6 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon UK
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