Love Bites - Il morso dell'alba

Vampire movies but without actually vampires, or maybe because you don't even understand this, so the movie can be described in one word, very confusing but also ridiculous. The film is very poor in plot and inventiveness and it doesn't even entertain much because even if seeing all the strange stuff of the nightlife is nice for the rest the film is ugly and above all as I already said it has a really confused plot with a common thread that is visible at the beginning but then gets lost in the chaos of the uselessness of the film. So concluding the movie is really rubbish and watching it is just a waste of time.

This film has atmosphere, no doubt. But something is missing, I'm not so sure what. Guillaume Canet does not convince as a tough guy who goes from bar to bar. He's got a face too pretty and doesn't look like a party animal. Asia Argento however is perfect. Sure, her role is more physical, she has not much to speak in French. I knew a girl with exactly the same Italian accent, sounds nice by the way. The whole movie is nice to look at, but somehow, you don't get too much involved. The end could have been more dramatic.

This is a splendidly produced, directed, acted and scripted modern vampiresque tale carved into the underbelly of raucous French night life. There's plenty of glitter, pizzazz and charm mixed with a heaping dose of grit, filth and decadence that adds a unique realism to a captivating mystery of a ne'er-do-well (the "innocent" Antoine played by Guillaume Canet) thrust into a quest for the enigmatic Jordan "the lord of the night" and his alluring goth girlfriend/sister Violaine (sexy erotic-horror vixen Asia Argento). The audience follows the young Antoine on his spiral downward into nether regions of disturbing violence and despair, but he presses onward, transfixed by the memory of his recent collision with Violaine that left him physically empty and weak but spiritually rejuvenated. With newfound purpose and desire, he braves life-threatening dangers to peel away the fragile skin of ambiguity and uncover the truth about Violaine and the rumors of vampirism. This film diverts from the trappings of Anne Rice influenced romanticism and repetitive classical vampire motifs without resorting to modern-day drug metaphor. This film is better compared to Larry Fessenden's 1997 HABIT than any other recent vampire film. It is an intriguing mixture of the urban (ie. Fessenden's Manhattan), yet one cannot escape the thought that it draws on the somewhat surreal French vampire films of Jean Rollin. It is visibly quirky and riddled with moments of dark humor that serves to undercut some of the more disturbing (and mildly gory) scenes, but it is no comedy. It's unique and interesting throughout - and the mystery is fun to watch unfold.

In Paris, Antoine (Guillaume Canet) is a ne'er-do-well, using all the possible tricks the get into private parties and night–clubs. He lives the nightlife, and sleeps nearby a swimming pool of a gym club. He uses the name of a mysterious man known as Jordan to get into a private party, where an old man gives him 100,000.00 French Francs, with the promise of another 900,000.00, is he gets any information about the location of Jordan. Antoine and his friend Étienne (Gérard Lanvin) chases Jordan through the Parisian night, and Antoine meets Jordan's sister Violaine Charlier (Asia Argento). Violaine is considered a weird person, who bites her lovers in the neck. Antoine gets involves in weird and dangerous situations while pursuing Violaine and her brother. Something is missing in `Les Morsures de L'aube' to be a great movie. It has a beautiful photography of the night of Paris, excellent soundtrack and the sexy Asia Argento. However, the story is very confused and the conclusion is very disappointing. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `Cães da Noite' (`Dogs of the Night')

A nightclub gadfly (Guillame Canet) sneaks into a private party by claiming to know a guy named "Jordan". The host catches him and enlists his aid in finding this guy "Jordan", which he agrees to for some reason. After a series of misadventures that take up nearly half the movie he finds "Jordan" and his sexy sister "Violaine" (Asia Argento), and they turn out to be some kind of vampires. They have been making these kind of erotic vampire movies both in Europe and the US for forty years now, and they're really getting to be kind of old hat. This one is also kind of annoying in that it is very modern-day French (i.e. very glossy and derivative of Hollywood). Jean Rollin was doing this much better thirty or forty years ago.

It does have a couple of good points though. Asia Argento is absolutely smokin'-ass hot. She has a very memorable scene where she picks the protagonist up in a club and takes him home. She goes to fix him a drink, which she drugs, and comes back naked from the waist down (her pants mysteriously MIA). Moments later they're in bed where in his drugged state he hallucinates that she is THREE bottomless vampire girls all sucking on him (and not just in the vampiric sense!). The guy also has a wife(?) who is a lounge club singer. At one point she sings what appears to be a French lounge-club version of the great Willie Nelson song "The Night Life" (i.e. "The night life ain't no good life"/"But it's my life"). I'm not sure this is actually the Willie Nelson song, since it's in French, but if not, he should probably sue.

But if I sound a little uncertain of some things, it's because I didn't really understand French dialogue very well, but perhaps I should have tried more because the English subtitles were either generated by a malfunctioning computer translation program or written by someone who had no grasp on the English language. They're often unintentionally funny (such as when they try to translate bizarre French idioms directly into English), but mostly they're just distracting. I don't know if all of this adds up to a recommendation or a pan, but you can decide for yourself I guess.