TIFF 2023: ‘Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’ Is As Delightful As Its Title Suggests

Sasha has a problem. She’s a vampire, like everyone else in her family. Unlike them, however, her ability to feed is not brought upon by hunger but by compassion. That’s a big problem when you need to kill humans to eat them: there’s really no time for emotions. As she enters her teens (well, relative adolescence for a vampire), her parents cut off her blood supply in the hopes that she’ll buck up and start slaughtering for herself. It’s not so easy. Fortunately, there’s a depressed teenager who seems weirdly okay about being a noble sacrifice for Sasha’s hunger.

As a certified vampire lover - anyone who says zombies or werewolves are superior is a liar - I’ve been eagerly awaiting the big return of our bloodsucking brethren to the entertainment mainstream. Vampires have a cultural cycle, much like musicals or Westerns, reappearing when the era calls for it. Post-Twilight and YA frenzy, vampires suddenly became very uncool, especially in comparison to their flesh-eating pals who blew up in popularity via The Walking Dead. The past couple of years, however, has seen a noted rise in vampiric lore: AMC’s sumptuous adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, the horror comedy Renfield, and the recent El Conde, wherein Augusto Pinochet is a vampire seeking death after a life of literal genocide. Coming to us from Quebec, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is a delightful balance between comedy, melancholy, and a good old-fashioned love of death.

Set in a version of Montreal where nobody seems to care about the ridiculously high death rate, Sasha (played by Sara Montpetit) shuffles through life with the style of a very chich goth from the ’70s. Her long hair frames her face in perpetual darkness, the prototypical sulky teen who is actually in her 60s. A childhood incident involving a birthday clown who was supposed to be her birthday present (and meal) has left her terrified to even try and feed on a living being. Her parents are at their wit’s end, and after finding a cookie in her bedroom, they fear she’s ready to kill herself (human food is fatal to their kind.) They send her to live with her vicious but glamorous cousin Denise (Noémie O’Farrell), who is so lackadaisical about killing humans that she has meat hooks hanging from her kitchen ceiling.

Everyone is obsessed with death here, including Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), the adolescent whose life genuinely sucks. He’s bullied every day, viewed with disdain by his teachers, and after coldly killing a bat during gym class, he’s now seen as a future school shooter in waiting. His view towards death, mostly his own, is hilariously pragmatic. Surely it’s not that big a deal, right? When he meets Sasha and almost instantly understands that she’s a vampire, the prospect of becoming food is just common sense for him. If only it were so easy for Sasha to turn off her basic (in)human decency and get the job done.

There’s not much focus on the lore of vampires here. It’s all very matter-of-fact, the gothic glamour of feasting on seduced maidens tossed aside for the mundane domesticity of keeping the fridge stocked. One of the sharpest jokes comes from the gender dynamics of Sasha’s family over this predicament: her father may be more understanding about her issues, but he still leaves it to his wife to provide food for the family. Really, the labour of being a vampire seems exhausting. So many shallow graves to be dug.

Montpetit and Bénard have an easy chemistry, him intimidated but fascinated by the mysterious woman who seems far more concerned with human suffering than the actual human. There’s real tenderness here, even with bloodshed and the promise of murder ahead. Sasha and Paul are stuck in a world that seems too small for them both, emphasized by claustrophobic spaces and tight camera work. It helps that both of them are compelling and funny, not overladen with misery or mystery. Jokes about suicide are plentiful without getting away from the subtle tone of the narrative (one moment at a meeting of depressed people elicited many chuckles.) The dynamic of our central pair is very 2000s teen comedy, just sardonic enough to make the melancholy work. One scene, a possible homage to one of my favourite vampire movies, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, sees the pair escape from the world together for a moment to dance (the soundtrack leaps from pop to classic to an absolute banger of a novelty song at the end.) It’s all rather chaste, given the circumstances, but undeniably sweet.

The vampiric exterior is just the gateway to a strong coming-of-age story. Vampirism as a metaphor is highly flexible and can be used to mean just about anything, from sex and death to politics and infection. It’s not hard to see the struggles of adolescence in Sasha’s life, as her body starts to change (her fangs finally come in), she has desires she can’t control, and there’s this guy she suddenly can’t stop thinking about. She doesn’t want to stop being herself and fears these involuntary changes will undo her very essence. Hey, who can’t relate?

It’s striking how easy Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person makes it all seem, avoiding tonal whiplash and sticking its landing as it builds to what the title makes inevitable. It’s all the more remarkable given that this is director Ariane Louis-Seize’s feature debut (prior to this, she made several well-received short films.) If this signals the new age of 2020s vampire fiction then this era of bloodsucking is off to an excellent start.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person had its North American premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It currently does not have a wide release date.