Bloodthirsty

                                
                                 If life were simple, it wouldn't be so interesting.



Certainly a twisted modern take (as of 1999) on vampirism puts an existential spin on blood drinking as the wealthy owner of an incredible mansion in LA requests from those who rent from her at least one drink of their blood every once in a while to keep her "illness" from weakening her. The new tenant, Celia (Leslie Danon), a bitter, angry, impulsive young woman with insecurities, eventually allows her renter, Whitney (Monique Parent), to make a slight incision in her chest flesh and drink, soon finding this "sharing"  a two-way exhilarating experience. It refreshes Whitney and seems to endow Celia with a sense of inner strength and belief in her capabilities, a guitar-playing gig with a band on the verge of a record label deal quite a possibility after a successful audition. But Celia takes jewelry from Whitney, loses a secretary job and seems unwilling or uninspired in securing another place of employment, even selling a "scarab box" given to her as a present (from Whitney who seems to present Celia with gifts as if an obligated out of guilt because of the seeming necessity of blood drinking). Another major thorn in Celia's ass is Whitney's boy toy, Jim (Matt Bailey), who is trying to persuade his lover that this blood illness is merely a warped addiction she needs to abandon in order to function more normally. What you have is essentially two really troubled women and a guy who is more or less caught in the middle. While Whitney is attempting to fight off her desire to drink blood, Celia becomes obsessed with getting her to continue, believing that their sharing is behind all of her successes. Jim is in Celia's way because he's the one that is trying to ruin everything by stopping the sharing.

The director loves to toy with what we see visually, such as camera tricks (tilting angles, even spinning the camera clock-wise and counter-clockwise, an arthouse tactic that rather annoys me), flickering lights in Whitney's house (seriously, someone needed to call the electrician), and the increasingly desperate noirish technique of lighting Monique Parent's eyes as to manufacture a mystique around her unusual character. The house is often dark, with the lighting centered on the cast in the rooms (and the aforementioned Parent's eyes), and the director seems determined to craft a disorienting atmosphere of desperation, madness, and psycho-sexual frustrations/habits.

I need sex like a 16 year old boy in a Tijuana strip bar.

Monique Parent's career and background in the softcore porn industry isn't lost on the director who exploits her willingness to get naked if needed during her sex scenes with men after drinking from Celia. Celia is damaged goods, coming off a wreckage of a relationship, needy when it pertains to Whitney's attention, and unpredictably masochistic when life for her gets difficult (she is a cutter who beckons/yearns for Whitney to drink from her more than just seldomly). It was obvious that their current living situation would spiral out of control sooner or later, particularly when Jim leaves Whitney, soon to return and present a rift in the women's blossoming homosexual relationship. Then you have Whitney's back-and-forth on if she should or should not drink blood, Celia wholly committed to the cause of giving her blood freely, and Jim concerned for his lover's mental health: this is a boiling pot of psychological chaos certain to erupt. Someone's bound to suffer the consequences, hmmm...wonder who? The surprise narrator (the one who will be joining the duo of blood-drinking sisters) is a rather amusing touch...

The script is quite talky and, to tell you the truth, not a hell of a lot goes on as the plot doesn't have a whole lot to offer besides long conversations about what drinking blood can do for you, how fucked up life is, and how three people can barely repress their pent up emotions. Parent tries to apply a mystery to her character when she's basically a weird sexpot who speaks in a monotone delivery. Celia is just disturbed. Jim should have just stayed away; it sure would have been better for his health.