Review by Ben Bussey
Have we run out of new ways to tackle the vampire? I must say, I’m beginning to wonder. With each successive attempt to breathe new life into that most time-honoured of monsters, it’s seeming more and more that there just isn’t an approach that we can take that doesn’t directly recreate that which came before. It’s a tricky one, because to a large extent the monster must follow the same rules as ever in order to fit in with the tradition; break with convention too radically and you’re asking for trouble. (Fear of crucifixes falling by the wayside is all well and good – but twinkling in the sunlight is obviously pushing it.)
Director/co-writer Olivier Beguin would seem to have approached the vampire with the best intentions. He’s taken the classic lore, treated it with respect, and used it as the backbone for a largely mature look at the trials and tribulations of a long-term romantic relationship. I get the impression Beguin was indeed aiming for something new – but unfortunately he winds up succumbing to cliche in some pretty bad ways, with a narrative that gradually drifts from indie naturalism to glossy melodrama, all the while treated with an utterly straight face which ultimately only serves to make the whole enterprise a bit ridiculous.
Thirtysomething couple Alex (Yannick Rosset) and Livia (Jasna Kohoutova) seem to be living the young professional dream, making a comfortable living doing jobs they love. However, whilst taking a holiday in Livia’s homeland of Romania, they have a bit too much to drink one night, and in his intoxicated distraction Alex unwittingly walks in front of a car. Happily his injuries aren’t especially serious – but a blood transfusion is required. Yup – Romanian blood, I know what you’re thinking. Soon enough Alex is thinking it too, as he finds himself repulsed by garlic, terrified of the sun, and most notably seeing a white-eyed, sharp-toothed, blood-soaked version of himself every time he looks in a mirror. Understandably enough, Livia takes this to be nothing more than paranoia on Alex’s part, but his fears are not dismissed by his mother (a small role from Fulci icon Catriona MacColl). But when trying to talk him around has no effect, Livia decides to take a different approach and play along – but while she may be simply humouring him at first, soon she too has cause to believe.
There is something interesting going on in Chimères, and it works up to a point. In many ways what we have here is quite similar to 2011’s Midnight Son (another modernist vampire movie which somehow didn’t entirely work for me), but the notable difference here – as Beguin emphasised in the post-screening Q&A at Sheffield’s Showroom (the UK premiere) – is that instead of a new young couple, we have marginally older, notably more established partners who already know each other well. As such, Chimères presents a relationship in a state of flux, where circumstances threaten to drive the two apart, and one party finds themselves making changes to accomodate the demands of the other, even as things spiral way out of hand. To a large extent this works, and Kohoutova and Rosset do convince as an established couple struggling through a difficult phase. I daresay it won’t hurt for most viewers that they’re also a very good looking couple who spend a lot of time lounging around scantily clad, and get up to some quite full-on rumpy pumpy.
The problem is, at a certain point Beguin and co-writer Colin Vettier seem to run out of ideas, and what begins as an intimate, mostly apartment-bound, relationship-based story drifts bewilderingly into Buffy/Blade/Underworld territory, with a series of over-the-top monster beat-’em-up scenes. I suppose the earlier scenes emphasising that Livia trains in boxing are meant to largely justify this – but they don’t. I suppose also these OTT street brawls might again be taken as a metaphorical representation of how far people in love will go for their significant other… but I’m not swallowing that either. Proceedings are played so straight overall, with so little humour, that when things shift that far into melodramatic territory – sombre mumblecore traded in for Hollywood action excess, but still played with a straight face – it just comes off silly, and really undermines what came before, particularly given it drags on a bit beyond what might have been its natural conclusion.
Another problem is that little thought seems to have been put into anything beyond Alex and Livia’s relationship. Old-school horror fans may be drawn in by Catriona MacColl’s presence, and the always-reliable actress does what she can with what she’s given, but it’s a pitiful excuse for a part. Beguin also confessed in the Q&A that the role might have easily have been a friend or sibling, but he made it Alex’s mother purely in order to cast MacColl – but it simply isn’t enough to cast an elder genre star without giving them something significant to do. Much the same can be said of the few other supporting characters – and the attempt at creating some villains in the final act is so utterly half-hearted one really does wonder why they even bothered. (Some fans might get a smile out of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from Ruggero Deodato, though.)
So, the jury’s still out on whether there is indeed anything new left to be done with vampires – but we can safely say that, try as it may, Chimères falls short of that task. Beyond that, it also falls short of a fully satisfying horror movie experience, and it’s sad to say so, as clearly there was some potential there.