Film Review - Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Images courtesy of Pivot Pictures.
Watch out Cullens, there's a new vampire family in town! Fans of Twilight (2008), Dark Shadows (2012), Submarine (2010), and Moonrise Kingdom (2012), get your fangs out and sink your teeth into this quirky vampire coming-of-age film.
68-year-old teenage vampire Sasha (Sarah Montpetit) has a problem. She feels empathy for humans and has a phobia of killing them. Her parents stage an intervention and decide that Sasha must be forced to kill to eat. Starving, she attends Depressed and Suicidal Anonymous where she finds her next meal, Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a suicidal teenage boy who volunteers his life to feed Sasha.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Vampire Humaniste Cherche Suicidaire Consentant) is a stylish dark comedy directed and written by Ariane Louis-Seize. This French Canadian film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September of 2023 at which Louis-Seize won the Director’s Award in the Giornate degli Autori. It then premiered in Canada at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Since then, Humanist Vampire has stopped the hearts of critics winning a suite of awards.
Sarah Montpetit won the Best Female Actor in a Canadian Film award last month at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle. Her moody performance is bewitching. Sarah Montpetit as Sasha is elegant and awkward and I couldn’t get enough of her cool gothic aesthetic. I particularly loved the scene where she mouths the lyrics and dances to Brenda Lee’s ‘Emotions’. Montpetit’s facial expressions in this scene bring so much energy and playfulness to the sulky character.
Humanist Vampire really shines in its beautiful mise en scène. Louis-Seize deviates from the clichéd depictions of vampires as cold, spooky, and living in dark castles. The interior of the vampire houses are warm, cosy, and eclectic. Louis-Seize juxtaposes the comforting interiors of the vampire dwellings with the sterile, harsh, and fluorescent interiors of the human homes. The vampires themselves also dress in a cosy and colourful style, it’s only Sasha who gravitates to wearing an all-black uniform. This contrast is also reflected in the colour grading of the film. The vampire interiors are red and vibrant, the scenes filmed outside are dark, and the scenes filmed in human interiors are cold and blue. Louis-Seize has flawlessly tied together storyline, colour, mise en scène, and composition with great attention to detail. No wonder she won the One to Watch award at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle this year.
The one thing I was left wanting after the 90-minute runtime was more! I’ll be closely watching what Ariane Louis-Seize brings to life next. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person stole my heart and has found a cosy home in my letterboxd top four.
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Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is screening in select cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.