You Are A Lesbian Vampire

So you’re a lesbian vampire. And you’ve met this girl. And you really like her but you know that soon you’re going to have to make the big decision: do you walk away or do you bring her into your life and let her know the truth about what you are? You know very well what the consequences of that could be.

A satirical look at the experience of navigating relationships within a small dating pool, Thirza Cuthand’s short (which is bizarrely rated as adult content on at least one platform) features really quite restrained black and white visuals but still has plenty of bite. It pokes fun at the cliché of lesbian relationships leading to swift cohabitation and pledges of lifelong commitment, but a high proportion of viewers will see themselves in it, and the more so as it addresses the issue of bumping into one’s exes no matter where one goes. This is difficult enough for mortals. Imagine having to cope with an accumulation of such experiences over centuries.

Less than romantic about the notion of eternal love, this is a film which tackles the ethical quagmire of dating somebody centuries one’s junior head on, whilst teasing out the numerous little embarrassments that complicate the process of finding love. Cuthand herself narrates, with wonderfully dry delivery, whilst her actors demonstrate the passion behind it all. We can see the chemistry between these characters but are prompted to ask: in the grand scheme of things, is it really worth all this hassle? There are deeper questions here about what drives us to make the choices we do in life, and how easily we might make different ones, but they’re left for the audience to ponder, never distractying from the comedy.

With a title that makes it sound like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, this clever little film, which screened at the Scottish Queer International Film Festival 2021, is designed to put the viewer on the spot. The theme may be fantastic but on another level the theme is all too familiar.