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".
献给对于青春悔恨不已却依然怀揣着浪漫主义精神活着的当下，无论多么的言不由衷，我爱的就是你，正如“天色尚早，但夜幕很快就会落下，趁着白日漫漫 我们去散步吧”
今年下半年美国上映！在美国写影评的朋友欢迎跟我联系！
第一次喜欢洪常秀。大概是因为这部影片可能真的会吸引影迷、电影人、电影学生。影片构建的巧合与叙事的讨论非常迷人，而且情节和洪常秀与金敏喜的现实生活又有映射。特别是整体气质很自然，很舒服，很随性。
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？
敏后真的好美啊，做梦都会梦到的那种。
最终随性而出的，是一部小说家的电影，某种层面上，这也是如今洪常秀的创作状态。就像片尾金敏喜手持小花的段落美好又自然，使人已无法分辨这是生活状态的记录还是刻意编排的演出。一切都回到了李慧英自我阐明的那句解读，「那个虚构的故事不会阻碍真实事件从我建立的情境中发生」。
人生无处不尴尬，人生无处不趣味。尽管室外场景大多都在过曝状态，还是觉得洪常秀的黑白片质感比彩色片好很多。结尾一定是故意的，这表白方式也没谁了倒是……
just一些导演自己的爱的表达 感谢豆友的翻译
3.5星。只有清谈，没有开车也没有公路的洪常秀个人强烈风格的“公路片”，女主跟这个人聊聊，到下个场景再跟别人聊聊，下个场景碰到其他人又接着聊，拍电影这件事也只是聊天碰出来的巧合。必须是毫无预设与期待，看这部片才能被惊喜到，彩色的那几场，电影全部活了起来。
【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。
越发炉火纯青的创作，真实世界的美丽如此简单地显露。
敢不敢给这片子祛魅？看完真想骂句脏话🤬……搞不清为什么要浪费生命中的90分钟看这不知所谓的片子 如果不是有这么好的演员在撑着 真的直接睡了 还有那死亡拉镜头和配色……拍电影的意义仅仅就只是记录真实生活吗 一丁点艺术拔高都不给吗…嗯 柏林 就这？
竟然还挺喜欢的 在金敏喜出现前频频走神 人群对话的尴尬氛围真是拿捏的太好了
洪现在真的有种铅华落尽的意思了，片子里的几个知识分子几乎都是他自身各个时期自我的投射，而聊到的关于那部电影，关于杜撰下的真实，则用来揭露整个片子要表达的：我给你们看了很多个我，我一直在自省一直在矛盾，但很多事我已经放下了，我现在就知道一件事，我爱金敏喜。
第一次完全抛开大金这个因素而对洪导的电影如此喜爱，人与人之间的关系真是文艺片的真谛！以小说家为切入，镜头几乎大部分时间保持着至少三人成众的场景，少部分二人镜头中，二人谈论的依然是第三方的事情；而且伴随着小说家的移动，因其遇到了不同的人而时刻变换着上述关系中的参与者，或回忆往事或犀利辩论或分享新知，最终以一部影中影结束——电影演员在其中手捧鲜花唱着婚礼进行曲将全片唯一一抹彩色奉献给了爱情，绝了！！！
3.5星。只有清谈，没有开车也没有公路的洪常秀个人强烈风格的“公路片”，女主跟这个人聊聊，到下个场景再跟别人聊聊，下个场景碰到其他人又接着聊，拍电影这件事也只是聊天碰出来的巧合。必须是毫无预设与期待，看这部片才能被惊喜到，彩色的那几场，电影全部活了起来。
一边梳理媒介变迁一边阐释艺术家特质，开始只觉“通俗易懂”，愈看愈发现真相不可知，直到最后，银幕内外的人们都在与自己灵魂的分身对望，而那难以启齿的爱也终于连接了影像与现实，妙笔不要太多哦。
百感交集。把自己交付给爱之后拍出的电影。想起自己的电影，只有焦虑和强迫。没有爱的对象，只有达成的对象，逼迫的对象。太暴力了。
你要像猫一样好奇这个世界，同时又要像侦探一样观看她人，好的观众一定也是好的歌手，对一百种说出“我爱你”的语气熟稔于心。总之，要先修补好生活，因为情感的真相就是生活，每一帧转瞬即逝的语调、姿态、表情、动作，千万不要眨眼……所以影像的真相才不是叙述啊，而是一种诗的语言。
导演是有多爱金敏喜这个演员，那种老去艺术家对青春的渴望，逐渐斑白头发，仍旧向她诉说着，心中的情书，成了一部电影。
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