Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
看完全片的我：骚瑞，作为多年洪粉，我对洪导最近戒烟还是戒酒毫不关心，对洪导有新欢（即使不是金）也无任何意见，但是看着一脸精明的金敏喜佯装单纯天真的忸怩作态，真的倍感恶心......但她和洪是绝配，因为两人骨子里都很享受名利带来的拥簇（也就是无论制作什么作品都会有人给出长篇大论的赞美），但在表达上绝对遵循“这是我自由的选择，我只渴望自由地自我表达，我追求纯洁的艺术，名利对我来说什么也不是”。不过洪的狡猾在于他会设置某些场景嘲讽自己的虚伪，而金在他的视角下永远无法开口，永远死气沉沉。
一部纯真的爱情电影，看到最后竟然有点感动。
全程过曝让你只能专注于人物，长时间凝视着寄居在空间里的人物状态的变化。这就是虚构情境下身体真实的生成变化。最后的极致浪漫把我看迷了眼。这是洪式炫耀，他竟然开始解释自己的片子了。
2022-06-02
金敏喜的亲和力和自成一派的氛围感，在每一部电影中都能恰到好处的演出自己的感觉。她的多面很神奇，但又有着女童般的纯真和可爱。书店女老板与演员老公两个画外人也必定有其情节所在。洪导用电影拍出真实感与小说家的想法相同，但借助演员说出一些不知是否是导演想说的话，这样不会过于明显吗？换作是我可能不会把个人想法如此直白地展露出来，也许会永远隐藏，也许不会讲述出来。
接着《在你面前》而来的这部“小说家”的电影（那么究竟是Novelist还是Auteur呢？是小说家俊熙还是洪自己呢？）就好像是对于之前“支离破碎”的李慧英所扮演的另一个veteran角色的补救；cast到如今这组演员的浑然天成已经超过了评论能够作出的评论；徐永嬅姐姐胖了好可爱！
"每个人都想用自己的方式过自己的生活，不要浪费我们自己的生命就好了。"
昔有褒曼捉鸡，今有敏喜拾叶。既是爱的宣言，也是电影创作宣言。
表达欲的重新构筑：通过不断学得并尝试的创作手段，甚至是概念转变性质的创新（写作—手语—影像）来挖掘未曾探索的巧思，随即思维的不易读取性便可成为直观化的视觉要素进行直接意义上的接收，把剥离信息的掌握权交还给观众，而洪（李慧英）要做的就是这点—对文本层面的另维加工。当然语言与表述是不可或缺的，只是在“创作者”的身份之上掩饰上一层“审视者”的标签，我们在画面中看到的被拍摄的故事就好像本身存在，再由演员们进行一场拙劣又尴尬的表演秀一样，审视者则站在一旁进行不必要的“指导”，电影的文本框架就演变为了一份伪装的真相，一部记录的小说。就像我们之前一直注视在旁人簇拥下笑着的敏喜，而在最后目睹了她孤身走出影厅的恍惚一般。我们需要的，就是这种温柔的欺骗。
【8】还真是第一次看洪常秀的电影，在片中感受到了很闲散、舒适的幸福，满脑子都是“返璞归真”四个字。也是才知道他和金敏喜的戏外故事，这么看来确实像通过电影在“汇报日常”，本来也是作家电影嘛。
“天色尚早，但很快就会暗下来，趁着白日漫漫，我们一起去散步吧。”和drive my car相似的结构但是不一样的生活，我喜欢看起来开心的电影。
很喜欢的故事 女演员采花那段让我感觉很甜蜜
好吧，你牛逼，你做到了，我们也羡慕死了
电影啊，真伟大。
—你在用彩色拍吗？
另一种《引见》，有趣的是惊讶的发现上次看洪尚秀正好是一年前上影节的《引见》，洪老师明年见了。
要是哪天我结婚了，我也要拍个这样的东西在婚礼上放！
2022.4.21 韩国首映 Cinecube. 洪尚秀变了…变了好多…已经脱离了很多 越来越纯粹了 好像就是电影本身 虽然无法定义 但电影本身就是这样。金敏喜就像普通人一样，捧着狗尾巴花，笑着，哼着婚礼进行曲，纯粹本身。
用手语读诗，用电影讲我爱你。
看了两部洪尚秀的电影之后本来心灰意冷，以为可能他就不是我喜欢的类型，这部完全改变了这个想法。故事并不是重点，有一个想拍的演员，捕捉到她和有连结的其他角色之间的自然互动和气场，一部电影就成型了。最后十分钟是绝对惊喜，谁能不爱这样天真烂漫又随性的金敏喜呢？
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