12/06/2016
Arab Times
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LOS ANGELES, June 11, (RTRS): Back before “The Sopranos” — well, actually, just as “The Sopranos” was midway through its first season — a movie comedy came out that presented the idea of a gangster who goes to see a psychiatrist as just about the most nutty, screw-loose hi-larious concept in the world. Even after six seasons of “The Sopranos,” the notion behind the Robert De Niro/Billy Crystal comedy “Analyze This” still sounds kind of funny, and it’s no trick to apply the same basic joke to certain other...professions. A gladiator seeing a psychiatrist. A superhero seeing a psychiatrist. Donald Trump seeing a psychiatrist. (Well, okay, there are limits to plausibility.) So how about a vampire seeing a psychiatrist — or, better yet, a vampire going to see the OP (original psychiatrist): the man himself, Sigmund Freud? Are you laughing yet? Or, if you’re one of the few people who will go to the new Austrian movie “Therapy for a Vampire,” are you spitting up the comedy equivalent of a blood clot?
We’re in Vienna in 1932, and the monster in question who seeks out Freud’s help is Count Geza von Kozsnom, a Romanian bloodsucker who is bored, bored, bored with his vampire wife, Elsa (Jeanette Hain), because the two have been married for, like, centuries. Can anyone relate? (Nudge, nudge.) Count Geza is played by Tobias Moretti, who in profile does look a bit like Bela Lugosi, but mostly he resembles a debauched Mike Wallace. He’s a very civilized and depressed aristocrat, who has become so jaded by his lifestyle that he has an assistant go out and draw blood from victims, which he then guzzles out of a flask. Dr Freud (Karl Fischer) has no idea that he’s treating an undead neurotic, and therapy, as it turns out, doesn’t do the count much good. He’s too much in thrall to his lost love from hundreds of years ago, who he thinks has been reincarnated in Lucy (Cornelia Ivancan), a bohemian model who’s having relationship issues. Her artist boyfriend, Viktor (Dominic Oley), insists on painting her as a blonde — and, indeed, seems to be getting ready to go full “Vertigo” on her.
Style
If a diagram were the same thing as a script, then “Therapy for a Vampire” directed by David Ruehm might be a smashingly silly lark. But as written and directed by Daniel Ruehl, the film is a blueprint of mild anemic kitsch. It’s an undead comedy without the blood of experience coursing through its veins. The count and his wife, who you might say are at each other’s throats, each pair off with one half of the young couple. Elsa, whose undead style consists of wearing a Louise Brooks bob (though it looks more like a Louise Brooks wig purchased in a costume shop), latches onto Viktor and insists that he paint her portrait so that she can see what she looks like. (Mirrors weren’t doing the trick.) And the count woos Lucy with that whole “Come and be a creature of the night! You will live forever!” routine. The best thing in the movie is Cornelia Ivancan. She’s got a real bloom — a glow of misbehavior. No one will let Lucy just be who she is (Viktor wants to change her hair color, the count wants to change her mortality), and “Therapy for a Vampire,” to the extent that it has a theme, is a feminist anthem. If only it weren’t such a cheesy, thinly written, badly lit one.
The notion of an old vampire couple coping with the anomie of the ages owes an obvious debt to Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers Left Alive” (2014), which was an infinitely more textured — and funnier — movie. The way this all plays out in “Therapy for a Vampire” brings it closer to being a bloodsucker version of “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).” Call it “The Plasma Colada Song.”
Also:
LOS ANGELES: Joel Edgerton is in negotiations to star in the thriller “It Comes at Night,” to be directed by Trey Edward Shults.
Edgerton will portray a man protecting his wife and son from a mysterious presence terrorizing them right outside their doorstep. David Kaplan is producing the film with A24, which is also distributing.
Shults wrote and directed “Krisha,” which won the SXSW grand jury award for narrative feature last year.
A24 acquired “Krisha” as part of a two-picture deal with Shults and released the movie in March with domestic grosses totaling $144,000.
Edgerton can next be seen in the interracial drama “Loving,” which Focus opens on Nov 4. Focus bought the film, also starring Ruth Negga, for $9 million at the Berlin Film Festival.
Edgerton also starred in “Black Mass,” “The Gift” and “Exodus: Gods and Kings.” He made his directorial debut in “The Gift,” which he also wrote and co-produced.
He’s repped by CAA and attorney Bob Wallerstein. Shults is repped by WME.
The news was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.
