I strongly suspect that the premise of Therapy for a Vampire originated from an idle joke: What if Freud psychoanalyzed a vampire? Maybe it’s not ‘haha’ funny, but it at least affords a muffled, erudite chuckle if you consider how -- well -- Freudian everyday life for a vampire sounds when not taken literally.
Starting from a joke has been the actual genesis of many projects, to mixed results. The magnificent TV series, The Sopranos, and the much less magnificent shock-horror Human Centipede movies are examples. Therapy for a Vampire probably falls somewhere in between in terms of merit. It is pretty funny, but the tone (which is always a sticking point for horror-comedies) is baffling at times.
It’s a neatly plotted story that basically centers around two relationships: the vampire, Count von Közsnöm’s (Tobias Moretti), and his unhappy marriage to a bloodthirsty vampiress (Jeanette Hain), and a bohemian painter, Viktor Huma’s (Dominic Oley) who has an alternately playful and antagonistic relationship with a young woman called Lucy (Cornelia Ivancan). The two sets become enmeshed through their mutual acquaintanceship with Sigmund Freud, who acts as the calm center to the stormy couples around him.
Freud, who Karl Fischer plays as an avuncular, slightly scattered professor, is solicited by Count von Közsnöm for analysis, feeling “old and tired”, “fed up of this everlasting night”, and “long[ing] for light”. Here we get the scenes on which the movie sells itself. Freud sits at the head of his couch, absently noting the complaints of his patient, not skipping a beat. But this is not the bulk of the movie. The rest is a daffy romp full of shape-shifting, love spells, amnesia, and the like.
It has its best moments when it winks at the maddening interplay of desire, sexuality, fantasies, projection, and self-reflection, but its tone seems to actively subvert the potential that is available from its premise. The cinematic quality of the movie can best be described as kitschy. It is a period piece, but it is neither shot as a stylized approximation of the past, nor does it feel particularly contemporary. Its style occupies a no-man’s-land that feels out-dated, but not old; movie-like but not cinematic.
But maybe this is appropriate given the subject matter. Just as the vampire hangs tortuously between life and death, the movie tilts perilously between delightful and dopey. But if fantasy is an enactment of unsatisfied desire, as the good doctor has it, then Therapy for a Vampire takes “fantasy movie” to a new level. So much to be desired, so much projected significance, but characterized primarily by a lack of satisfaction.
