Director: Ariane Louis-Seize
Release date: 2023
Contains spoilers
This Canadian film, in French language, is a dead-pan comedy with both coming of age and romantic elements and, of course, a title that will send various social media algorithms into frenzy. It features vampires that, it is implied, can be born as well as turned and thus develops a nuclear family unit for them. More than anything, I think there is a lens that this can be watched that starts a discussion around neurodivergency.
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| Lilas-Rose Cantin as Sasha |
It starts with a black screen and voices. A young girl, Sasha (Sara Montpetit, played young by Lilas-Rose Cantin), is being led with eyes closed to her birthday present. Once open she is delighted to see a keyboard. Her father, Aurélien (Steve Laplante), tries to hand her a beginners guide to playing but she plays competently without it. They wonder if she has sneaked lessons but no, it’s in her blood.
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| hugging the clown |
At the party are her dad, as mentioned, her mum, Georgette (Sophie Cadieux), her cousin Denise (Noémie O'Farrell, played young by Valence Laroche) and her Aunt Victorine (Marie Brassard). There is a knock at the door – Aunt Victorine has got her another present, a clown called Rico (Marc Beaupré). Sasha is delighted, hugging the clown tight, but for the family he is also dinner. When they encourage her to attack (her fangs will just pop out), she cannot.
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| Sasha's family |
There are tests. A dentist is stumped to why they do not emerge. She has brain scans watching a horror film – and the neurologist suggests that her brain is showing empathy rather than hunger responses to humans in peril. It was here that I first thought that she seemed to represent a neurodivergent vampire as they spoke about the areas of her brain lighting up differently on scan and this fit with a different thinking pattern. This could also fit her natural affinity with the keyboard. The next scene, in which a PTSD diagnosis is suggested, does not fit with this. But then, as I thought more, it does fit with the insinuation that neurodivergency is a mental health issue, as espoused by some, rather than the thinking pattern difference it is. I’ll come back to this.
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| Sasha busking |
Cut to modern day and Sasha busks outside a convenience store. One of the listeners puts some confectionary in her tray (later we hear that food is poisonous to vampires and her parents find this and worry she intends to self-harm). Mum and dad argue over her, mum is sick of hunting for three. The next time she sets up to busk she notices a young man stood, looking like he might jump from the roof of the bowling alley. He is Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard). She follows Paul after his shift at the alley, almost hunting him and causing him to bang his head, which bleeds. She retreats in shock when her fangs come out.
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| Paul on the roof |
Paul is continuously bullied and a loner. We see him, at school, when a bat flies out of a sports' cupboard in the gym, causing classmates to lose it. The bat flies at him and he instinctively smacks it with a badminton racket. Though it pains him, he then puts it out of its misery. His principle (Micheline Bernard) calls his mother, Sandrine (Madeleine Péloquin), insinuating he is on a pathway to murder – serial killers harming animals and working their way to humans. This is clearly not the case and brings us back to the conflation of neurodivergence and mental illness – Paul is shy, a loner due to this, but shows empathy and also arguably untypical reactions. Again, society tries to inaccurately label him (in his case human society). It is true, of course, that he suffers from depression but anxiety and depression are common within the neurodiverse community, caused by them being forced into a neurotypically designed world.
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| fang |
Chance brings Sasha and Paul back together in a group therapy for those who wish to self-harm. He is very open about thinking that dying to help another person is noble and this draws them together, with the thought that she might feed on him (having been cut off from her third party blood supply and sent to live with Denise until she learns to be self-sufficient). What we get is a friendship and, perhaps, something more blossoming. As for lore, a vampire must drain a victim to death to prevent them turning, they shrivel up in the sun and have an allergic reaction to crosses. Vampires do age, but slowly. In the main film Sasha is in her 60s.
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| Paul and Sasha |
I really liked this, helped in no small measure by the two lead performances and their understated but ever-present chemistry. This isn’t laugh out loud funny, for the most part, we have sad, lonely primary characters and a theme of self-harm that means the more dead-pan style of humour works so very well. There is an interesting “vampire society” side that is present throughout. Worth your time, one feels. 7.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
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