Kiss of the Damned

In the countryside near to New York, Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume) lives alone with her housemaid Irene (Ching Valdes-Aran) in a manor that belongs to her friend Xenia (Anna Mouglalis). When she meets the screenwriter Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia) at a video rental store, they immediately fall in love with each other. However, Djuna discloses to Paolo that she is a vampire and while making love, she turns him into one. Paolo moves to her house and they happily live together. Out of the blue, her wicked and troublemaker sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida) appears to stay for a week with them, turning their lives upside-down.

"Kiss of the Damned" is an underrated and sexy film romance with a good romance with an international cast where the female vampires are French actresses. The plot is well developed and the music score is classy. In 2013, Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed the cult "Only Lovers Left Alive" with a similar storyline. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Beijo do Vampiro" ("The Kiss of the Vampire")

With passion comes great responsibility ... especially if you are not able to control it. The main character is a very strange one and the actress has a tough role to play. There is a stretch in what she has to depict. The story itself is more adult than your average teenage movie that came out lately (yes Twilight and any spawn it gave "birth" to), but also very predictable.

I watched it at a Festival, so the audience knew or expected this to be a strange one. If you are about to watch it, you should note that too. There is a lot of sexuality and some violence in this, something to consider too. A nicely done movie about containment, self control and love in general. Also about the meaning of life ... it does have to say a lot, as you can see

If European cinema in the 1960s had access to HQ digital cinematography and sound, then a vampire film made then would be like this. Xan Cassavetes has crafted a deliberately retro feel to the movie and it works. I love the soundtrack, which has variety (just listen to the opening few minutes). It uses experimental sounds to crank up the tension for example. If you ever loved prog-rock, and know then that punk rock by comparison has no class, no depth, you will love the fact (is it an in-joke?) that the baddie comes complete a with a punk rock soundtrack. Xan reveals herself to be a delightful musical snob. She is also firmly on the side of the vampires.

This great-looking movie is a mixture of what works and what doesn't, hence a seven. Kudos to getting French actress Anna Mouglalis to play Xena. While beautiful, Anna actually plays Xena as a character actor. What a voice! When her character 'loses it' later on in the film, Anna beautifully conveys the tics, twitches and desperation without overdoing it. She should be in more movies. The bourgeois party scenes are convincing. The film tells a conventional but slight, linear story, with a beginning, middle and end.

On the minus side, although the initial romance is convincing, a better film would have gone deeper into the romance and involved the viewer more, with more complex characters. Another better version would have gone all out to scare you, successfully. The 'horrific' bits here are not really horrific.

This is deliberate. The film is by design a mood piece. It is even relaxing in parts, making it a good film to 'wind down' to with your partner in the evening. Xan understands that relationships, even in a vampire flick, are more interesting than blood and screaming. But she is even more into the 'feel' of the movie. Viewers raised on the Texas chainsaw massacre remakes and their ilk might not want 'relationships' or 'feel'. If you can understand these things before you watch it, you should enjoy the movie.

I have to be honest because this is not my type of movie. The movie mostly focuses on the romance plotline that I'm not a fan of because I'm not interested in those types of stuff. Their relationship happened pretty quickly , and she tried not to be with him because of her vampirism, but he wanted to see the truth self of her and accept it. The relationship is standard with him learning more about the vampire and slowly getting more about each other. Now, the other plotline is the main character. Sister comes to stay over and is more violent. That plotline is the horror aspects with her killing random people to drink people out of them. It makes it different compared to the other romantic vampire movie that I won't not say. It's the only part that keeps me watching it until the end of the movie. Speaking of the ending, there's no climax to be found in it, and the ending is fine for the most part.

I saw this movie at this year's SXSW. It's refreshing to see a vampire movie that features vampires in classical form... and it is even more refreshing to see a story from the vampire's perspective. This movie may not have hardcore CGI and 3D Gore splashing out into the audience, but it does however offer an interesting 'to the point' storyline and creative indie film tactics. People giving this movie poor reviews are probably looking for the next "Interview With A Vampire" or "Twilight" and are judging it on a summer blockbuster 10 million dollar budget scale. I found this movie to be plenty entertaining and worth checking out.