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".
是你的态度
get到了马伊琍，想念一位诗人和我给他的洋甘菊，想念老大昌苔条花生蝴蝶酥恒隆修鞋摊和咖啡，并且觉得原来中年的生活也可以过得有滋有味。
太喜欢了！独属于新派的话语属性和旧时代的烟火气缔造了这些横冲直撞却又时刻携带着小心翼翼的形象。你可以不相信开口闭口都是Jimmy Choo和英文名言的街头鞋匠，但你不得不信他围绕着这些所养成的浪漫体质。生活中哪来那么多“爱情神话”，可即使承认了它的虚伪，我们还是感到欢喜。迟暮的他还能回想起过去的喷泉之夜，银幕上的相识最终用死亡来祭奠，在回忆的容器载体中，这当然是一个无比罗曼蒂克的故事，因为它是编的。
曾经的事情已经被用旧，回不去也到不达远方，可当下仍在蒸腾的泡沫里消耗着。精致的，遮掩的，情怀的，市井的，虔诚的，无用的，交汇的，断裂的，真真假假都没关系，就让生活这样继续吧。
书架上有一本《繁花》，我现在有兴趣看看了。
在上海取景的电影很多，但全篇台词上海话，又把上海话里的口语运用到位且换作其他方言则没办法发挥到极致的电影就不多见了，（虽然字幕翻译并没有办法完全展现出部分用词的幽默精髓），尽管没有地域限制，但本土观众多多少少占点优势。
怀着挑剔的心去看，但说不出不喜欢三个字。但也没必要那么大包袱，确实看得开心，就像一盘没下完的棋。其中几个点特别特别戳我。比如男人喜欢一个女人，就本能得觉得自己要对她好，开始施加情感压力，好可笑哦。就比如男人自以为自己能克制ego，是新好男人，但一旦情绪崩不住又变回公牛，好可笑哦。就比如女人……没了
所以B先生忙起来是应该的[捂脸][捂脸][捂脸]
很好看呀。可能因为呈现了特别不像中国人生活状态的一面吧。
上海，费里尼，索菲罗兰；小资，话痨，中年危机，真的是全都踩在我的点上。没想到生活中熟悉得不得了的场景，就这么被搬到大荧幕上，爱死了。
四星+
最后的烂片揉碎了对爱情神话美好的幻想。究其真假毫无意义。就像多数谜底揭开的失望。人还是活于现实，明天太阳照常升起了。
拍中年人的没有那么“纯粹”的爱欲，很轻盈很聪明。名叫“爱情神话”，但电影中含爱情量又不高，跟普通人生活中“生活/爱情”的配比量差不多，由此电影的格外落地，不悬浮，真。导演私自夹带了一些元素：“红拂”杂货店、“夜奔”酒吧、“艺辉国际学校”，卖电子烟作为艺术从业者的副业，一个山西人迁移了自己与男友在上海旅居的经历用于创作，十分“私房电影”了。尤其喜欢最后聚众看碟的场景，大家先是正襟危坐，而后昏昏欲睡肚皮饿，揭示的真理是：爱情固然有神话性，但它亦兼有瞬时性，留不住太久的才美丽。导演在学校里学习、欣赏的就是费里尼的《爱情神话》，然后这么学院派的一个高贵的名字配上这部一个如此生活世俗的内容，十分有张力，四两拨千斤，就像好学生交出的一份模仿大师的优秀习作，结构精巧，工于制作，也能看出导演身上的大师天赋。
我可太喜欢倪虹洁了，尤其是说上海话的倪虹洁，又魅又迷人
个人一直偏爱方言电影，很舒服的文艺中年片，不油腻不抓马不喜剧。虽然很多台词跟核心的爱情神话故事本身都有很重的缝合痕迹，在这些中年演员自然表演下不会违和。精沪一本满足。#上海影城cinity
又是一部被片名耽误的佳作。抓住了上海的精髓，又市井又洋气，瑕不掩瑜，有好多好多场戏都特别特别有趣，可爱死了。灵呀灵呀~
上海人的群戏，真洋气，听着上海话也感觉挺舒服，完全没有了当年宿舍听台州话要躲出去的冲动。放松、自在、讨好自己、不疾不徐，这是中年历尽沧桑却又对生活充满希望和憧憬该有的样子。
自从老乌讲述不知是否真实的索菲亚·罗兰开始，电影的市井气息就遭到了“破坏”，进而变成了一场关于上海的梦了。老乌死去，新闻上的索菲亚·罗兰幸存，媒介与现实交织，在虚构的魔法以后留下荒凉与悲伤，承担这一切的是老白对于老乌的怀念。
一直在想英文片名B for Busy怎么翻译，后来恍然大悟，这是中英杂糅的一个表述，也就是电影中老白的两个外号——白（B）辛苦/不（B）辛苦，也表达了影片探讨的爱情本质的一种答案。
外地人在电影中感受到了上海的那种小资生活，西方文化的渗入。电影名说是爱情神话，实则代表以爱情为主的精神世界。
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