There
has been no shortage of depressive, emo vampires, so it is nice to see one
finally get professional help. However, Count Geza von Kozsnom seems
comparatively healthy compared to all the Stephenie Meyer clones. Frankly, a little
uxoricide should be sufficient to perk him right up, but those Countess happens
to be just as undead as he is. That makes things dashed inconvenient when
Kozsnom believes he has finally found his reincarnated true love in David
Ruehm’s slyly sophisticated vampire spoof, Therapy
for a Vampire (trailer
here),
which opens this Friday in New York.
When
you are undead nobility, money isn’t a problem. Thanks to the Count’s generous
donation, Sigmund Freud is willing to schedule his appointments after dark. He
need not worry about the Count trying anything. The vampire has not had any
enthusiasm for the undead business for quite a while. The Countess Elsa is a
different story. Her appetite for blood remains healthy, but vanity has led to
her own peculiar neurosis. As stands to reason, it has been ages since she was
able to check herself in a mirror. It turns out, painters also suffer a
supernatural block whenever she sits for a portrait, which has led to a whole
lot of dead painters.
Perhaps
Viktor will be different. He was talented enough for Freud to hire him to paint
outlandish dream scenes for his upcoming book. When the Count lays eyes on the
portrait Viktor painted of his girlfriend Lucy and subsequently left in the
esteemed analyst’s office, the vampire is sure she is the re-embodiment of his
one great love. Unfortunately, for Viktor, that means Kozsnom will lead his
wife to believe he is the one painter who can finally capture her features. On
the other hand, Lucy might be in for some immortality.
Even
though the stakes are eternally high for the characters, Ruehm maintains a breezy,
easy-going vibe. The film largely plays as an homage to the original Universal
monster movies, cartoons like the Drak
Pack, and Count Chocula cereal. It is an affectionate romp all the way through,
but Ruehm still earns merit points for being one of the novelists or
screenwriters tackling the vampire mythos to fully exploit their traditional savant
like need to count and tidy. (According to legend, sprinkling seeds or twigs
along a bloodsucker’s anticipated path was a sure fire way to slow them down,
requiring them to clear the obstacles one-by-one.)
Happily,
Tobias Moretti is not another sensitive vegan-looking vampire. He is suave,
sophisticated, and mature, in an old school, cape-donning kind of way. Moretti’s
enjoyment vamping it up, so to speak, is contagious in the right way. Jeanette
Hain is all kinds of trouble as the Countess, preening and stalking her way
through the night. Karl Fischer is surprisingly restrained as Freud, but since Therapy is a German language film, it
really wouldn’t make sense for him to do a ridiculous German accent. Cornelia
Ivancan and Dominic Oley are sufficient as those crazy kids, Lucy and Viktor,
but David Bennent adds some quiet but suitably erratic weirdness as the Kozsnom’s
Renfield, Radul.