30/12/2025 - Antonin Peretjatko cranks his surreal comic verve and satirical social irony up to the maximum, gleefully scrambling the codes of the vampire-film genre

"It’s time for him to become an adult." It’s a very particular kind of coming-of-age into which the irreverent Antonin Peretjatko has hurled himself, with glee and with the brakes completely off, with the very comical Vade Retro, launched in French cinemas by Paname Distribution on 31 December. The offbeat filmmaker, appreciated for The Rendez-Vous of Déjà Vu [+see also:
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Drawing the viewer into its Grand-Guignol spider’s web, the film doesn’t shy away from any delirious boldness in its funhouse mirror of reality, grafting burlesque, gore, adventure and caustic philosophy onto the world’s foibles, both eternal and contemporary (blinkered religious crusades, a thirsty quest for eternal life via blood cleansing and cryonics). Conceptual reversals (in an age of sexual fluidity and consent) and cross-pollination of influences are thus on the menu, overflowing with delightful absurd gags, in a film that centres on a duo made up of the young (he’s about to turn 358) vampire Norbert (Estéban) and his factotum Didier (Pascal Tagnati), dispatched across the seas towards Japan by the former’s parents, whose ship runs aground on the volcanic island and in the jungle of Boulet-Rouge.

Their mission — on pain of triggering a curse — is to find a young woman "of pure blood and good family" for Norbert, who must bite for the first time. But our fledgling vampire is hardly motivated, for not only has he been afraid of girls ever since the vampire hunter Ludvika Von Ludvik (Eva Rami) tore out one of his canines, he also doesn’t share the purist ideology of his ultra-reactionary parents. Chaperoned by Didier (whose job is on the line if the trip fails) and by the local mixed-race Vitali (Yolène Gontrand), Norbert nevertheless tries to conform to the rules of his nature, and the rejuvenation clinic run by the very Cartesian Professor Franquin (Céline Fuhrer) seems like ideal hunting ground, with its wealthy female patients and visitors (Alma Jodorowsky, Yuliya Abiss) and its lab teeming with blood bags. But swiftly spotted, our vampire is hunted by representatives of all the religions in the area and by the pitiless vampire hunter…

Coffin, tombs, cave, cemetery (complete with a disabled parking space), stake through the heart, spiritualism, fog and smoke, etc.: all the genre’s ingredients are in play, but Antonin Peretjatko gleefully warps them by clashing them with modernity and prejudice. This collision and camouflage, rich in comic inventions, strings together in a register of deliberate exaggeration (not least in the performers’ acting), pushed to the outer edge of carnivalesque grotesque, which the viewer must get used to and accept in order to savour to the full its out-of-the-ordinary, cult potential.

Vade Retro was produced by Acqua Alta and coproduced by High Sea Production, Kaly Productions, Tiktak Production and Muscle. Best Friend Forever is handling international sales.

(Translated from French)