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".
有一天，在加利利海上，两个评论家坐在一艘船上，突然间耶稣出现了，行神迹在海面上行走，一个评论家对另一个说：“瞧见了吗？他甚至不会游泳。” ——如果一本书很感人就说它故作伤感，很古典就说它匠气，有趣就说肤浅，很有智慧就说它做作，如果它很有启发，那就说它哗众取宠好了。
-很有智慧？那是做作；
当时的法国社会是分层的，年轻人有光明而无前途，悲剧收场
但看不懂人生
但还是值得一看
电影中的点睛之笔多来源于旁白，因为那是文豪巴尔扎克写就的。场景精美严整，演员表演也各安其分，就仿佛是一场精雕细琢的歌剧。主角的行为动作总是慢慢的，初期在乡间自矜于贵族血统的舒慢，进城后极力模仿和融入大贵族们的怯慢，投入名利场后放浪形骸的迟慢，万事皆空爱人死去后的痴慢。就算他最后走入湖中，泪也是慢慢的染开，水波也是慢慢的散开。卢西安就是这么慢半拍的度过他激荡的青年时代，也与他想要的东西都曾只差一步之遥，无论是爱、头衔或永恒的文学，而他最终“不再期待，开始生活”。巴尔扎尔人生中一定见过至少一个卢西安，而巴黎造就了很多卢西安，因为每个人都可能是卢西安。
Il commence à vivre.
興衰史的敘事感很流暢 文字的書寫以及編輯室猴子鴨子的混亂感很中我的命門了 一方面也是我欽羨的世界 瘋狂恣意隨性 掌握筆桿的人有話語權(想當一次惡勢力XD)but希望大家真的 一個半小時能講完的話不要拖拖拉拉講不完帶壞節奏
是好看的。但也不是完美的好看。法语真好听。英文字幕的关系也没有完全懂。男主是真的美，身材也好。可惜全片没有值得喜欢的人……现实主义真的太现实了吧…… 现在看也并不过时，人红是非多，到新闻黑幕和理想现实之间的割裂……日光之下，果然并无新事。《幻灭》是悉尼法国电影节的开幕影片，影片内容和自己的工作行业相关，也是很巧合了。
看吧，有金钱和文字的地方，就有虚荣、谎言、嫉妒、争斗…… 两百年前与两百年后并无差别。 Lucien 身上有巴尔扎克早年巴黎经历的影子，而Nathan则是他幻想中的自己。仔细想想演员选得挺合适的，Benjamin Voisin虽然不是正统帅哥，但脸上有那种天真与狂热交织的感觉。
再次为柯拉莉心痛一次。电影把小吕涮得真白，把妹夫那条线删完了。演得最好的是埃斯帕，看到她就想到禁治产开头那些话，不寒而栗……（西班牙教士，你在哪里？）
回到电影，男主命运和文字的命运一样载沉载浮。从古典诗歌，到香艳八卦，再到小报广告，文字和人性一起堕落。现在回看巴尔扎克的剧本，觉得和21世纪现实那么呼应。
在极端困难时，他遇到了一个小报编辑，在报社，一个崭新的世界向他展开，这里提倡胡编乱造，收费发贴，他如鱼得水，编写大量高质量水贴，获得了巨大的声誉和金钱，并收获了一个青年女演员的爱。然而旧情人要求再续前缘时，他背叛了自由派同志们，妄想加入保皇派中，获得爵位，名正言顺和初恋在一起。这种首鼠两端的做法，又无强力背景和高智商支持，结局已经注定了，在他期望最辉煌时，遭到两个派别的联合打击，小情人死去，自己负债累累，整个悲惨人生还变成了人家的小说素材。惨。
都不是好东西，唯一让人有点怜惜的是甜美的小可爱。
对我来说也是法大革命时期的风情片吧，不过不太喜欢临近幻灭时那个超现实的镜头，实在不着调
古典文学作品改编，这段19世纪乡村文学青年在巴黎贵族圈的沉浮史，不仅精准还原了那个时代欧洲腐朽名利场的风貌，还被赋予足以震撼当下的意义。
跃阶层“幻灭“的悲剧！假新闻和辟谣及掌声都是生意！
“巴尔扎克原著在导演的适当改编下对社会做出的辛辣讽刺放到当下任何一个国家环境中都毫不过时（大量的独白暴露了导演只能被原著牵着鼻子而画地而趋地搬运使得电影变成了一部名著有声书）；忠于原著对人物进行了细腻刻画以及对历史的华丽复刻使得故事工整精巧（不会做减法导致整部电影的繁枝细节沉闷冗长且令人乏味）”——在海上的两个评论家如是说道。
巴尔扎克看穿了欲望的本质啊……一切的龌龊和堕落几百年没变过。有了巴尔扎克的文本，电影已经成功一半了
「我想到了所有那些在覺醒之後，必須找到內在力量的人。」Ta將停止幻想，開始生活。很久沒看到名著改編電影了，巴爾扎克的文字總是出現金句。所謂幻滅，人間喜劇。
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