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Poetry of vampirism, "une terrible malédiction" to the world but to the protagonist an antidote: "I'm just beginning to live!" The madeleine trigger is a poster of a crumbling seaside chateau, the fellow (Jean-Loup Philippe) notices it at a soiree and is flooded with déjà vu, the site of a childhood brush with a gamin in white (Annie Belle). She materializes inside a little movie house out of Robbe-Grillet screening The Shiver of the Vampires, then teleports to the graveyard via Méliès cuts. The seeker follows obsessively, with subway scuffles and straitjacketed abductions along the way. "Come. This night will be ours." Postcard ruins like a portal into the subconscious, the Gothic desire that will not stay entombed, the quintessence of Jean Rollin captivation. Enfance perdue, the lost boy in the gangling grown body still serving Maman (Nathalie Perrey) and releasing a hoard of lissome bloodsuckers in diaphanous sheets by accidentally knocking over the crucifix next to their caskets. The female photographer's private studio updated from Clouzot (Quai des Orfèvres), after hours in the aquarium just ahead of Rivette (Duelle). A certain olfactory side of remembrance, "the person evaporates, but the memory remains." The Rollin surrealism in spades, a true descendant of Franju—the button pushed to switch on water fountains also deactivates the assassin's pistol, the smug psychiatrist is about to administer the shock of order when twin nurses pull down their masks to reveal fanged smiles. Awakened from silent slumber, the heroine savors the cacophony of waves and seagulls and wind at the beach: "Look at the brass instruments, with a mad conductor leading them!" The finale beautifully visualizes Mallarmé ("Dans l'onde toi devenue / Ta jubilation nue"). With Martine Grimaud, Catherine Castel, Marie-Pierre Castel, Claudine Beccarie, and Mireille Dargent.
--- Fernando F. Croce |