Review: 'Kiss of the Damned' a bit of handsome nonsense

By Amy Nicholson

May 2, 2013 12 AM PT

The sly joke in Xan Cassavetes’ “Kiss of the Damned” is that her vampire couple just want to be normal — read: boring. When not devouring possums in the countryside, Djuna (Joséphine de La Baume) and Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia) are happiest listening to classical music in their sedan driving home from a chic cocktail party where the host serves “politically correct” platelets, a tedious afterlife they hope to enjoy for the next 5,000 years.

Cassavetes (yes, daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands) clues us in with the title font of “Kiss of the Damned” that this is pure kitsch. But as soon as we fall sway to her sumptuously goofy gothic, in barges Djuna’s estranged sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida) on her way to “rehab” to recover from her addiction to human blood. Picture the stony, kewpie face of Kristen Stewart tarted up in Eurotrash latex and fake blood, and you have an idea of Mesquida’s electrifying sexual impact.

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Neither she nor De La Baume has a firm grasp of English, so we’re never sure whether they’re communicating with telepathy or whether it’s deliberately bad dubbing — this is, after all, as much a salute to Italian horror legend Mario Bava as it is an actual film. Yet the confident, female-driven sensuality of “Kiss of the Damned” anchors this handsome nonsense. Djuna lusts for Paolo, Mimi lusts for blood, and as for men like Michael Rapaport, here in a cameo as Paolo’s agent, they’re just hoping to stay alive.

“Kiss of the Damned.” Rated R for bloody violence, strong sexual content, nudity, language and some drug use. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes. Playing: At the Nuart Theatre, West L.A.

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