It Started With A Kiss

IT STARTED WITH A KISS – © Doug Brownlie, 2012 Concept and Storyline by Kara Brownlie

 A smacker right on the cheek to be precise.

The credits of the strangely poignant Vampire movie “Let the Right One In” or was it “Let Me In,” I can’t remember, damn it! Too much time has passed, were rolling quietly on the TV screen.

My twelve-year-old daughter and I were each in our own way processing what we’d just watched. We were totally silent. It was one of those films you either love or hate. Either way it hangs in your mind afterwards. It was like a modern version of an old genre. No glamour and no frills. Realistic and gory, with few special effects.

The young girl vampire; earthy, manipulative, sexually aware and lethal. The young boy; infatuated with her 'human' side, effeminate, pretty and with a dark side of his own. Her 'caretaker'; so in love with and dedicated to her, aging and unable to cope.

It was unsettling, sexually chargred, violent and tragic. It was impossible to stop watching!

I was pondering how a story about kids her age in such a dark and highly charged setting would impact her. Being a Swedish film there were hints of edgy sexuality between the main characters, even although they were only just into their teens and this too added to the tension of the film. I mean I wasn’t even sure that the boy character was actually a boy. It was so well done it left you thinking, “Mmm, I wonder.”

The credits continued to roll and the final scene played out…

As the train carried them away from pursuit, the young Vampire girl was hidden in her box knocking quietly but insistently on the lid in communication. Her even younger minder and caretaker was touching the lid gently and lovingly and returning the knocks to reassure her. This scene concluded the movie and was the image still ingrained on our consciousness.

The movie was clever because it forced you recall that her previous caretaker died a horrible death of self inflicted wounds trying to hide his identity so that he’d be blamed for a series of murders and allow her relatively free escape. His age had taken its toll on him and he was no longer to take care of the killings she needed to feed. Only as a last resort had she killed for herself.

It also led you to the conclusion that he had been with her since he too was a young teenager, and here it was about to repeat itself. This new infatuated boy was in for a rough ride into the future, until he too had served his purpose or aged beyond ability to perform.

The credits continued to roll… until the screen turned totally black.

My girl must have grasped the poignancy of the situation perfectly because she leaned over towards me, pecked me gently on the cheek and hugged me tight. “Dad,” she said very seriously and looking directly into my eyes, “If I was a Vampire I’d bite you, so’s you’d never have to leave me.”

“Jesus!” I thought and paradoxically at that, “That’s the nicest thing my girl has ever said to me,” and a tear came to the corner of my eye. For we fathers, not wanting to ever have to go away is a big thing. It was even bigger for me given our situation.

We were just the two of us these past twelve years. My wife died in childbirth, the huge hemorrhage drew whatever blood she had from her so fast, that there was nothing they could have done. The doctors were puzzled. Everything was normal leading up to the birth itself, but strangely she never had a chance. It would be years before the truth of this event became clear to us.

These memories were drifting through my mind and I was lost in time. I felt my girl lean closer to me, kiss me again on the cheek, hug me even tighter,

 And then she bit me!