Alexandra Cassavetes Sinks Fangs in ‘Kiss of the Damned’

If you don’t count TV doc Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, we can finally say that Xan Cassavetes has joined her sis, her bro and her pops as a feature filmmaker. In fact, Variety reports that her debut film, Kiss of the Damned has already wrapped and had French thesps Josephine de la Baume (bit role in Gavras’ Our Day Will Come and soon to be seen in Confession of a Child of the Century) and Roxane Mesquida (Catherine Breillat regular) and Milo Ventimiglia toplining with supporting roles going to Michael Rapaport, Anna Mouglalis and Riley Keough, who probably received a thumbs up recommendation from Nick Cassavetes (she starred in Yellow).

Gist: The Variety piece mentions that some of the films to have influenced the filmmaker/cinephile include: Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” and Harry Kümel’s “Daughters of Darkness.” This centers around two beautiful French vampire sisters who have separately come to stay at a summer estate — a ‘safe house’ in Connecticut. Ventimiglia plays a screenwriter who begins a love affair with the “good” sister and insists on joining her among the undead. However, after they begin their life together, the other “bad” sister (Mesquida) shows up and begins wreaking havoc almost as soon as she arrives. Slowly, her dark presence threatens to destroy them all.

Worth Noting: Xan was supposed to have worked with her sister Zoe on an untitled 4 Sketches project and had The Sky Is Green in development several years back — both projects appear to have been permanently put on ice.

Do We Care?: It appears that 2011-2012 might be the year of the indie vampire pics – and this climbs up to the top of them with the mention of 70’s film visual style. We’ll gladly stick our fangs into this as some our favorite indie producers in Jen Gatien (upcoming pics: For Ellen, Jack and Diane, The Girl Is in Trouble) and Alex Orlovsky (upcoming Derek Cianfrance film The Place Beyond the Pines) produced the project.