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".
片中好多桥段屡屡想让人鼓掌，太让人热泪盈眶了，什么是真的凝视，什么是女性主义。不管是镜头运用，还是色彩构图，独属于阿莫多瓦的色彩和电影，红是热情浪漫，黄是靓丽积极明亮……女性在追问历史探寻真相。阿莫多瓦的视野这次异常开阔，朝向那个国家的历史纵深处，挖掘真相，历史是具体的个人，记忆像照片一样在未亡人的脑海里，讲述里，下一代的生命里。真正的以小见大。五星
有点强行关联的意思 色彩还是很棒 虽然明白更大的主题才是导演这次的诉求 但可能围绕母亲这个小的话题拍实了故事会更好看
平行线会相交
2021威尼斯电影节最佳女演员。7分吧但是阿尔莫多瓦拍可能也就值三星。好处显而易见，比如装修和服装一如既往好看，比如通过音乐和调度等手段把一个狗血八点档拍得跟惊悚片似的（这么看其实《吾栖之肤》比这个好啊！），以及对诸多独立女性的颂扬（包括性向也可以流动），不过主要故事和开头结尾的历史伤痛根本就是两张皮（这么看是不是《回归》《破碎的拥抱》比这个厉害多了……），拍得太快了多磨磨剧本好吧……全片最嘲讽的一点，难道不是阿尔莫多瓦拍了个网飞片吗？？？？
虽然是阿莫多瓦，即便是看调度、看美术陈设都很享受，可实在是个让人提不起兴致的故事，个体和国家的两条线也没有很好的融合，更显狗血。
Almodóvar自VOLVER以来最好的作品。
导演说：西班牙与自己的过去有着非常糟糕的关系。其实，哪个国家不是如此呢？历史总是惊人的相似，人们总是一遍遍地去犯同样的错误。有时候，我很讨厌人类，有时我又很同情他们。不过，最终，我们都会成为白骨。
看完一脸懵逼，头尾的历史考古线和中段的母女线几乎毫无瓜葛，好像只是把两条新闻热搜简单拼接。更难以接受的是，单身母亲的艰辛和困境，最后居然还是要依靠男性解决，Almodóvar潜意识下的男子主义在近乎全女性卡斯、女权题材的框架下格外违和。
说明如果一个小男孩被绑架，如果没有能与鬼魂沟通的能力以及一个通灵的妹妹的话，必死无疑。
阿莫多瓦这部文艺远＜狗血剧情，剧本毫无悬念，在每一情节都可以猜中的前提下，阿莫多瓦的母性绘写和议题仍一直勾引着我（主要是女主太好看了！！！）主线只是为了引出暗线，阿莫多瓦的《痛苦与荣耀》算是自传般的回忆个人人生，这次，作为西班牙如今最重要艺术家的阿莫多瓦“记录历史”，把其变成了超越其个人表达的重要社会责任。记录西班牙的历史。西班牙人需要知道父辈尸骨累累，也需要知道那一堆单身母亲。
Don't marry a bisexual if you are homosexual.
婴儿去世，读菜兔杀，谎言与真相，但转到弗朗哥实在太特么硬了，口腔试纸都救不回来。。。
与《驾驶我的车》的心法暗通款曲——表现有关“迷因之复制、变异、选择和传递”的思索。但此片更突出：①“基因—迷因”这一对复制子在文明社会中的撕扯和纠缠；②透过母性于文明演替中的变与不变来传达影片对伟大母性的赞颂；③导演技艺精湛，众演员表演传神。
愈合与撕裂，阿莫多瓦对女性从不施加道德批判，在以母性维系的情感联结展示其多样性后我也开始对早前产生的原生家庭认知动摇了，特别在自己走入了人生下个阶段的当下，震荡出极大的共情。
3.5 太狗血了一点。色彩一如既往的美，但摄影质感实在不喜…
阿尔莫多瓦大概是到了想怎么拍就怎么拍的阶段了吧，片子的内容太杂了，有堆砌的感觉。他的故事和弗朗哥时期相应的点正是以母亲为焦点的生生死死，借助如今的故事来讲述特定年代的女性史，平行母亲也就是这个意思了。包括孩子抱错了这条主要线索，也是影射Franquismo时期对Republicana的产妇们的真实行为。如果聚焦在这里让二者更为契合，那绝对是个很牛逼的片子。但是在故事的讲述中加入了太多的元素冲散了历史这一点（通过结尾那句话我猜测导演也是想在这里多着墨的）。简单来说，导演一如既往的着眼于女性情绪，然而又想碰沉重的历史话题，结果就是导致片子很断裂。
历史不会沉默，永远不会。两位母亲依靠棉签，依靠孩子连结在一起，追溯，回忆，她们之前的爱和情，她们拥抱在一起，母亲是什么？后代是什么？伟大，热爱，赞美，这部也许不是最好的阿莫多瓦，但一定是及格的阿莫多瓦。
满眼的红与黄才不是为了好看，这是西班牙的颜色，两位单身母亲不正是那国旗上的平行红杠。主旋律电影都该好好跟阿莫多瓦学一学，国家的伤痛是如何通过个人生活表现。当两位母亲知道孩子真相时所迸发出的复杂情感，便是我们面对那些被掩埋历史时的心情。真相是痛苦的，它可能是被rape的产物，也可能忽然猝死，但它必须被揭开，国家和个人有义务去面对。阿莫多瓦通过两位本不相干的母亲，以十分离奇的方式相知、相恋、分离，慢慢酿造着观众内心的情感，在两人分别时达到高潮，阿莫多瓦也缓缓将镜头推向女主身后圆镜中的红与黄，其中深意不言而喻。那些由父权掩盖的真相，需要由“母亲”来挖出。如果一个母亲的声音不够，还有千万个平行母亲在呼喊着孩子的名字。
毕竟是阿莫多瓦出手，大师手笔还是在的，剧作元素设计还是很考究的。亲子鉴定的DNA取样与寻祖的DNA取样，一个向未来，一个向过去，两者的呼应还蛮巧妙的。Ana对过去忽视（逃避）的态度与她对亲生女儿的重视所形成的反差正是阿莫多瓦所想要表现的两种立场，而以此表达对历史重视的态度。而Janis的摄影师身份不仅有历史见证者的内涵同时也是对电影本体的一次隐喻，暗合本片的历史主题。多代单身母亲以及同性性爱的女性主义表达个人觉得还蛮惊艳的。不觉得狗血，设定也许俗了点，但能从琐碎生活切入沉重历史的刀法是老辣的。
力所不逮，有拼凑之嫌。真的有那么深刻吗?这部疫情期间拍摄的电影无法像以前的作品那么精致了。
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