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".
一首温柔的时代印象曲，艰难未知充满悲喜的家庭生活影像，动人之处在于时代痕迹和可信度，配乐太舒服了
晚安，夜旅人们。
不由得感嘆，甘斯布也到了演這麼大孩子媽媽的年紀了。巴黎城區和拉德芳斯真的各有美感。養眼療癒的清新之作。法國電影少見的含蓄溫柔，靜謐和善。
没有去过巴黎也没有见过塞纳河所以塞纳河河流湍急吗？不急的话我能不能形容本片就如同平缓的塞纳河一样温柔
相当舒服的一部电影，偶尔也想过上这种喜悦会油然而生的日子啊。。
写出这个故事的人真的好爱生活啊，爱生活什么时候变成一种能力了…
不过话说回来，女主看着不像只能住一居室的样子，他家这大玻璃窗简直梦中情屋……
很舒服的电影，是不喜欢家庭/亲情片的人（比如我）也能接受的家庭/亲情片。看到他们进电影院银幕上放是侯麦的电影，那一刻我真的好开心好开心。
本来甘斯布要来现场的，结果因为档期耍了我们，导演倒是识趣，知道我们不在乎他，随便露个脸就走了。
独自离婚带娃，过乳腺癌切除手术，前夫拒付孩子抚养费——家庭主妇被迫重新进入社会工作，拿着微薄的薪水。貌似体面的中产却也只是期待爱情的平凡人，笨拙亦真诚地应对生活的艰难。电影的节奏掌握得非常好，沉郁的现实底色上漂浮着轻盈乐观的感性与情绪。夜晚的塞纳河，清晨的高层建筑，导演去掉了巴黎那种傲慢，轻浮和mean的装饰，仿佛在顶层阳台俯瞰夜晚城市一刻身边奏响的舒适婉转的夜曲。
ENS Rue d’Ulm 对话导演 像是做了一场不属于自己的梦
去女儿新搬的房子里，E说，“总觉得不怎么自在，明明好像你是出去度几天假，真是没办法接受以后你再也不会回家的现实”。
还会有这样的场景出现在我的生命中吗？像水晶般剔透钻石般坚硬地回旋在他人眼中的一瞥印象，那才是时光的终点。
悉尼电影节SFF第7场，我们是如此容易破碎，却又在爱里，在夜里，在电影里，一次又一次地完整。永远爱夏洛特·甘斯布，美丽永远不受任何限制，美丽永远不会因失去而失去。
When I was young I listen to the radio
很舒服的电影，是不喜欢家庭/亲情片的人（比如我）也能接受的家庭/亲情片。看到他们进电影院银幕上放是侯麦的电影，那一刻我真的好开心好开心。
另一种“漫游式”电影，就像站在一列户外地铁列车内看向窗外，城市以随机却有序的侧面从眼前滑过。巴黎可能就像欧洲的纽约，每个人都是旅人，每当停顿，就以结伴的方式在城市内进行“旅行”。
好温柔的电影，满满对80年代的怀旧，全片沉浸在暖色调的朦胧中，大时代的变迁看似一笔带过，但作为影片灵魂的塔露拉正是从方方面面代表了左派浸入现代法国人的生活，不过她的不羁与自由，也沉湎于导演极力烘托的单身母亲一家的暖色中，导演相信美好可以治愈生命的苦痛，即使是时代变革，也需要温柔注脚。卡司方面影片丢出两记重磅，甘斯布与贝阿各有千秋，贝阿最后一个镜头回头的眼神就能道出她角色的一生，当年的法兰西花瓶早已成为演技派，甘斯布的表演更是炉火纯青，她的状态过分自然，自然到比苏菲玛索更能代表法国女性的魅力。这部电影最大的问题就是它太不“法国”了，它太抒情，从故事到配乐，八毫米胶片的插入更似对过去巴黎的怀旧，意义不大，结尾倒是非常法式，令人徒留惆怅。影片与《圆月映花都》从卡司到情绪的互文，也让我十分喜爱。
4.5 弥足珍贵的沉溺体验，在浮光掠影中走向隐秘目光。柔软梦幻的晨色与消落定格的黄昏同样美丽，昏睡的巴黎总在深夜释放它的鬼影，时间的裂痕总是在脆弱思绪处延续，历史的幽魂在记忆中形变。天际线的轮廓在每一次对话情景中浮现，电台广播的波段俘获了街头旅居人的茫然，灿烂的迷影回忆如塞纳河上的粼粼波光点缀着浪漫。话语的秘密似乎变得不再必要，诧异于人们是如此坦然诚挚贴近着彼此，迷途后的流放终究惊醒了反叛者静谧的惶然。一部如此朦胧迷人的城市电影，复古恍惚的进行时投射，它的美属于每个曾游走飘荡的眼睛，属于每个曾渴望占有夜晚的“我们”。尽管旅途随故人散去，喧嚣白夜不再拥有私密慰藉的契机，但烙印在瞬间的欢愉与孤独总是会在未来的情景中留下线索，成为不愿闯入的经验永远根植在下一段旅程的开场，照映着这片时空存在的绚烂。
最近难得打心底里喜欢的一部，温柔动人。连音乐和光线也满是1980年代的妩媚哀伤。
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