SFIFF: "Therapy for a Vampire"
Robert Nott | Posted: Friday, October 9, 2015 5:00 am
Horror/comedy, 87 minutes, not rated, Santa Fe
Independent Film Festival, 8:30 p.m. Saturday,
Oct. 17, Center for Contemporary Arts, 2.5 chiles
What makes Austrian director/writer David Rühm’s
horror comedy Therapy for a Vampire work is not the
picture’s wry one­liners about the undead (“Life’s lost
its bite,” a depressed vampire says at one point), but
rather its emphasis on characters searching for an
identity that they and others will embrace.
Therapy for a Vampire
It is Vienna, 1932. Lucy (Cornelia Ivancan) is the sad­ From Therapy for a Vampire
faced waitress looking to fulfill her artist boyfriend
Viktor’s fantasies – like wearing a dress, dyeing her hair blonde and maybe smiling once in a while.
She inadvertently finds a chance to redefine herself when she meets the mysterious Count Közsnöm,
played by Tobias Moretti. The blood­drinking count is downright suicidal, fed up with his needy
vampire wife (Jeanette Hain) and in serious need of psychological help. Enter Sigmund Freud (Karl
Fischer) who agrees to take on the count as a patient for a hefty price. Meanwhile the count’s wife,
seeking self reflection, hires Viktor (Dominic Oley) to paint her portrait, as she has never seen what
she looks like (vampires do not cast images in mirrors, remember). Therapy for a Vampire leads its
four main characters through a labyrinth of bloodlust and love as they each seek to find themselves in
very different ways. As the two vampire characters tire of their lifestyle, Lucy is smitten with the idea
of living forever and flying, which leads to the expected complications and some fun special effects.
It's an often sharp and amusing tale, but it never quite shifts into full throttle to take off on all
cylinders — or wings, in this case.