The 2023 vampire horror comedy Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person follows the titular heroine, Sasha (Sara Montpetit), who struggles to harbor the same appetite for blood as her fanged relatives. When she crosses paths with bullied teen Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), Sasha thinks she has found a solution but an unlikely alliance follows. Below is the interview with Humanist Vampire director/co-writer Ariane Louis-Seize as she breaks down her directorial debut, the filming process, and her many inspirations (both vampire and non-vampire). Available to rent/buy on VOD platforms and streaming now on MUBI.
Listen to the interview and read the transcript below — edited and condensed for clarity:
Hi, I'm Shaurya Thapa of Borrowing Tape, and I'm here today with Ariane Louis-Seize, the director and co-writer of the 2023 coming-of-age horror comedy Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. Thanks for joining us today. Before I get into the technicalities, how did you come up with the title? It's quite a mouthful. Was it a working title, or was it always supposed to be this?
It was the only title we always had. When I asked my good friend Christine [co-writer Christine Doyon] to write this film with me, I had this idea of this humanist vampire who put Craiglist ads to find a consenting person, and it was the title of the Craiglist ad: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. When I asked Christine if she wanted to write this with me, I said that I don't have a title yet. And she was like, what do you mean? For sure, it has to be this title. The Craiglist ad has to be the title of the film. And we never changed it. And it gives you a good idea of the tone of the film. And it's a trigger warning by itself also because you know that this title will be a theme in this film. And I love long titles myself, and even if people can't remember all [of] the title, just remember Humanist Vampire, and it's gonna be alright.
The protagonist in your film is a vampire called Sasha. We follow her from her younger years and then to her teenage. And it doubles as an exploration of adolescence from a young vampire's perspective. Was the protagonist always supposed to be a teenage vampire?
There are a lot of reasons. She has always been a teenage vampire in our minds. Like, I'm a fan of vampire films. I'm not a fan of vampires, but there are lots of vampire films that really stayed with me. What I like about vampire characters is the way I can play with attraction/repulsion, and it's a nice playground to talk about a really deep subject as well.
When I was a teenager myself, I liked Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Garden State — those indie coming-of-age films. For me, mixing those inspirations and tones together allows me to explore our contradictions.
Teenagers are amazing characters because when you are a teenager, you learn who you are, you learn about your contradictions, and you try to reject some part of you. You play with your boundaries, the boundaries of others, to try to find what those boundaries are. And so, I thought that treating a vampire like a regular teenager could be a new take on vampire stories. That's been the idea from the beginning.
While watching Humanist Vampire, in some scenes, I was reminded of Let the Right One In, Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, but what were the particular vampire or non-vampire films that influenced your film?
I didn't use it like a proper influence, but The Hunger by Tony Scott with David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve — was the first vampire film that I really enjoyed, because the vampires in this movie are not just bloodthirsty creatures. They are complex characters, and it plays a lot with the attraction/repulsion. So, it's the source of my love for or interest in vampires.
Also, the film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour is a big inspiration for me. I was about to shoot my first short film [Wild Skin], which wasn't a vampire film, but I decided to make the main actress watch it because I wanted to direct her like a vampire. And it's a weird film as well. It's about a woman who finds a baby snake in her apartment. The jungle grows in her apartment, and she reconnects with her wild instincts. So, it was my way of doing a vampire film without doing one. Now, Humanist Vampire is an actual vampire film, but I create my characters like they were normal humans, just with slightly different problems. So, it's another way to play with vampires without going for the obvious stories.
And I can also talk about Under the Skin by Jonathan Glazer. It's not a vampire film, but it's still about a non-human character who wants to, at some point, experience what it is to be a human and live like a human. And I do a little homage scene in my film to Under the Skin. There's this scene where Scarlet Johansson's character tries to eat a cake. She knows she can't eat food, but she doesn't know what it's going to do to her. This moment when she tried to actually do it was a big reference in my film, in the Poutine scene. It's like my Quebecois twist to the scene where Sasha tried to kill herself with the Poutine, our national dish in Quebec. And yeah, so there's also this attraction/repulsion in this film, and in this scene is the attraction to want to know what it is, but to eat it looks so good and or maybe it doesn't look good for you because you don't like what it is, but people seem to enjoy it so much. So, she wants to know what this experience is, but also it can kill her. I like playing with that. Under the Skin was a big inspiration for me and Sara Montpetit playing Sasha.
Making the transition from short films to your feature-length debut as a director. What were the challenges that came with it?
There was challenges for sure. Sure. I mean, there were challenges. I don't know if it's come with the fact that it was a feature, but we had 47 locations, first of all. There were a lot of locations to find and when we started shooting the film, we just had nine locations confirmed. And I had a precise idea of what I wanted to do visually. So, for me, it was hard not to be able to project myself in a specific location. And also, we were shooting at night. I was a morning person, but the shooting broke me. And for the first three days, I was kind of non-functional at night. Also, on the set, the directors are always the less experienced people because we are shooting once in a while, and all the team around you are used to shooting. So, all those things, plus I was feeling so tired already and so overwhelmed. You know it's going take all your life for two months. It's like doing a marathon compared to a sprint, basically. But at some point, you are used to this way of living, and you also become so close to your team. I saw in their eyes how much they were happy to do this film with me and how much they had confidence in me, and it it gave me a lot of courage to just notice how people were into it and and it gave me confidence that I was doing something right.
You mentioned 47 locations. Was this film entirely shot in Canada? And how long did the principal photography take you?
The shooting was all in Quebec, Montreal, and the surrounding areas of Montreal, and we had 29 days of shooting. So, we had to make the calculation, 47 locations for 29 days. It was a challenge because we had lots of ways to do it on the same night. And it was a shooting at night. We need a big crew to carry a lot of things and go faster. We had 3.3 million Canadian [dollars]. It wasn't a lot [laughs] for the ambition of the film and our needs.
Throughout the film, there are subtle shades of dark humor. Now, was Humanist Vampire always supposed to be a dark comedy or an extremely serious drama?
It's my first comedy, but I think of myself as a funny person, and I wanted to have fun. It was COVID, and I didn't want to do a very serious, hard drama. And also, I think my goal was for people to walk out of the theatre with a smile on. There are so many bad things happening right now. And I didn't want to add to those things. I just wanted to have a break from it. And my co-writer, Christine, she's a brilliant comedy writer. So, that was the intention.
You mentioned COVID. So, what year was this shot in?
We shoot it in 2022. But we started to write it in 2020.
As a filmmaker, what kind of films or directors inspire you?
There are several, but I think the first one that I want to talk about is David Lynch. Mulholland Drive was the first movie that opened my eyes to movie[s] as an art form. I like how Lynch challenged audiences and how he played with the tones and the dreamlike sequence. So, there are lots of qualities in his way of directing that inspired me a lot.
Jane Campion, as well. Sweetie — her first feature film is one of my favourite film. She has a distinctive visual style, and I like how she creates odd characters, but who are so relatable in some weird way. How she plays with really tragic subjects but in a playful way.
And who else? Noah Baumbach. Frances Ha is also one of my favorite films. And I like his dialogue and his work, [which] talks to the soul I have. And I can talk for the next hour about other directors that I really like. But yeah, that's it for now.
What are some of the themes and subject matters that interest you as a filmmaker? What can we expect to find in almost each of your films now?
My starting point is never "I want to talk about this subject." It's always either a piece that I read, and I'm curious about the characters, or I feel a kinship with the characters. So, my starting point is always the characters.
I'm developing a couple of things right now, so I'm not sure which one will be my next one (film). But I just finished writing a screenplay. It was an adaptation of a theatre play, and it talks about people who decide to disappear from their own lives without telling their relatives, and mostly, the impact it has on the people who are left behind and don't know what happened. We try to find answers. Because not knowing is so hard. I like characters who try to know who they are and try to break free from the past.I think it's the core of what interests me. And for sure, it's going to be a drama, but there are lots of fun moments as well. So, it's going to be a mix of more drama than comedy but still very lively dialogue with colorful characters.
All right, that's all for today, Ariane; thank you for your time.
Thank you.
I'm eager to check out your next project because Humanist Vampire is one of my favorite films from last year.
Oh, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
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