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".
又是一部关于记忆的电影 关于国家的记忆 割裂感主要来源于我不太了解那段历史 只从电影看 两个主线的关联性还是很强的 配色也是一如既往的艳丽 （看的太享受了）室内运镜缓慢平推感觉舒适 双人特写带有极强的情感 佩内洛普演的是真的好 阿莫多瓦对于女性创伤的追寻和法斯宾德搭配看简直完美 电影缺点是 阿莫多瓦的一贯作风用在这种双主线叙事上 还是有些乱且散 感觉真的没必要 【BFI - New releases】
努力寻找战争对上辈人创伤的过去、初为人母却父亲缺失的当下与对腹中新生儿期待的未来，用时间线索一一连接了起来。对于历史的反思性在本片里稍显生硬但份量很重，最喜欢的还是两位母亲在一起的故事以及她们都有着原生家庭里的不幸，父母辈失败了婚姻总是影响着自己，自己又把这种家庭的不幸传递给下一代。色彩构图依旧是阿莫多瓦轻盈多彩的风格，对于母亲的赞歌整体不如《我的母亲》那般深刻。
看一半时以为是如父如子的性转版，结果阿莫多瓦的奇情还是在，虽然已经比以前收敛了很多。无论是怎样的历史或血脉，都不能被随意掩盖，直面她们。
【B】我看懂了，而且大受震撼。。结局突然格局打开确实格格不入，但却感受到一丝奇异的恶趣味。在一部步步让人瞳孔地震的片子中用这样的突兀落下帷幕，显然是更有趣的做法。
阿莫多瓦最新影片，Cruz身上所具有的西班牙风情的野性之美太吸引人了，恭喜提名奥斯卡女主。还是那个很会拍奇情影片的阿莫多瓦，对准女性之间具有的互助，信手拈来处理得当的极具戏剧性的故事情节，生活中处处充满狗血，但在面对这样的历史悲痛事件中这一切都算不了什么，还有更需要值得我们去铭记的事情。怪不得西班牙没有送这部影片到戛纳
整体的衔接转折有点突兀；加莱亚诺的那句话值一颗星。
3.5 前一小时半一直四星来着，落脚点太奇怪了
"未来即是现在。"
"WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS"
【NO.40】其实题材挺好，前半段营造的也不错，既有地理上也有时空上的平行，但后半段垮了一点……
血缘 亲子 历史 生命的终结和延续，能把这些联想在一起，也蛮厉害的。一贯的八点档情节剧般的构想，这次对东亚观众来说可能并不够奇情，而且在严肃厚重的历史面前失去了轻盈。
看到影片五分之四，越发感到挖掘古迹一线和婴儿纠葛一线的割裂，直到最后十分钟，才对其中想要表达的议题有了模糊的理解，但也只是浅层又浮于表面的理解。一个民族的集体意识中有对错误历史的纠正与追奠，也有不期的新生将希望延续。再一次感慨，阿莫多瓦所塑造的女性形象（包括具有女性特质的男性形象）身上都有一种共通的母性，这种感情凌驾于他所展示的各种感情之上。
【千影计划102】
看在大美人克鲁兹的份上给四星吧，实则故事真是挺一般的。抱错孩子平行母亲的故事跟乱葬岗的故事无论是思想性还是情节性上关联都很弱，后面的乱葬岗也没给人很惨烈的感觉，相比之下我们民族的苦难可深重多了。
问题还是存在的，不过幸运的是阿莫多瓦依旧保留了自己的拍摄风格。佩内洛普依旧是坚韧的母亲，而阿莫多瓦也依然是那神奇的缔造者
完全没有 对她说 吾肤 等等那种独特气质了 跟我去过的马德里没有区别 或许是一波人推崇的回归“真实”接地气？反正我更喜欢早期的作品
如果没记错，我的第一部阿莫多瓦是《关于我母亲的一切》，这么多年过去，他的关切点一直是：母亲和流动的性向。如同他让佩内洛普·克鲁兹穿上Dior那件女权口号T，Feminist阿莫多瓦对于母亲的定义善意地充满弹性：专注于自我事业发展的47岁母亲、未成年的母亲、对自我性别不确定的母亲…即使不愿或无法承担母职，他一视同仁。这一点多么高贵。
夭折的正确，更正的错误，和解的新生；莫说故事狗血，真实的历史更狗血。
奇情混合血泪史，母系文化基底以悲伤的语调讲述，尘归尘土归土，找回的孩子、追溯的先祖，强烈到无需声明的血脉纽带。这真不是低配版百年孤独吗？……我并不反对个人与历史融合，恰恰相反，如果没有与血泪史互文，奇情的部分会显得非常平庸乏味。主要还是融合度不够，一想到这种混合可以达到什么样的高度，就越觉得还有很大的改进空间。但里面有一些蛮新鲜的性别视角，比如女性拍摄男性，以及非常罕见的女性的亲子不确定性等。
这死胖子就是个大骗子，千万别信丫的。
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