Day 19 of my 31 Days of Vampire Movies features brings us a more sensitive, if no less savage, sort of vampire, in the movie Tale of a Vampire.
A low budget movie from Britain starring the late Julian Sands in one of his better, if more obscure roles, Alex is a vampire pining away for his lost love Virginia, who disappeared without a trace many years ago. He now spends his days in a library, passing the long hours of his endless life, where he meets Anne, a young woman who has lost her fiance in a car crash, and bears a striking resemblance to Virginia.
Yes, its one of those stories, but its uniqueness lies in the smallness of its character’s lives. Alex and Virginia were all about grandiose love, grand gestures and declarations. Anne, by contrast, lives a small, quiet life, and while she is grieving we see she isn’t wallowing in it, just allowing it time to pass through her. Alex is drawn to her at first for her resemblance to Virginia, but comes to care about her as she is.
You can already guess this movie doesn’t have a happy ending. Alex is being pursued by his own predator, who draws Anne unwittingly into the deadly game between him and the vampire. And Alex is no saint trying to atone for his past. He is unashamedly what he is, and he kills without remorse. There are some surprising moments of gore here, as well as the death of a child, so that might be triggering for some viewers. The movie doesn’t pull its punches, and while it has a dreamlike, somewhat romantic atmosphere, again it starkly depicts the violence and cruelness Alex is capable of.
Tale of a Vampire is an obscure movie, but I recommend it if you’re looking for something in the vein of Only Lovers Left Alive. It’s dreamlike ambiance and compelling characters make it a thoughtful vampire movie.