Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang – avant-garde artistry from a distance

Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang is awaiting a UK release date.

Hospitals or asylums have historically been dramatic settings for audiences to sink their teeth into. Packed with backstories cloaked in mystique and a healthy dose of oddity, documentary and fictitious narrative formats have succeeded when utilising their unseemly charm. Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang embodies the sentiment beautifully, though it’s unusual straddling of disparate filmmaking leaves a confusing last impression.

Filmmaker Robin Hunzinger uncovered a box of hidden correspondence between his late grandmother Emma and seeming stranger Marcelle. The findings tell their story as schoolgirl sweethearts in the 1920s, parting ways while Marcelle succumbs to tuberculosis. Marcelle paints a vivid picture of rebellion from the confines of treatment, dubbing her confidantes as the “Blood-Spitters Gang”.

Within Ultraviolette’s opening seconds, its visual artistry is laid out entirely. Archived footage used throughout holds a haunting beauty, with the narrative subtext highlighting the luxury of the moving image. A French film noir tone to its structure, heartwarming memories of childhood frivolity resonate with all, the painting to ominous music effective in achieving the foreboding of what’s to come. Quickly, archived footage becomes intercut with family snapshots and occasional frames that unreasonably stray from black and white—leaving the viewer unsure where fact ends, and fiction begins.

A forced poeticism is felt throughout Marcelle’s reimagined correspondence, almost alluding to a parody of the timely period drama. Ultraviolette’s love-hate rhetoric is virtually Shakespearean, making for a dramatic recalling of magnified emotions. Much like any film, the overall effects will depend entirely on subjective taste—though there’s a more prominent sense of being able to lean into its format. Instead of committing to one structural strategy and sticking to it, Ultraviolette chooses to encompass it all, which often doesn’t sit cohesively.

Because of this, it’s challenging to emotionally connect to Emma and Marcelle’s haunting story. Narrative focus shifts from 3rd to 1st person, taking you out of the moments to which the narrative hook so desperately clings. Almost preachy in its overall tone, there’s a heightened intensity of feelings from the hospital confines—though it never truly feels like this wanton romance is reciprocated. With such heavy bouts of romanticism, it’s difficult to tell how much of the relationship was fabricated, as the audience is forced to process information from an unnecessary distance.

If there was such a thing as too much silence between two people, Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang’s lack of noise speaks volumes. There’s a lot to continuously take in—from alluring visual scenes drowned in water to the extreme emphasis on needing to seduce. As facets from all touchpoints of life move swiftly past the screen, the heightened moments of intense feeling are balanced by an overwhelming question of what the film is achieving. Many directorial choices feel overtly placed for no reason, leading to doubts about how genuine the depiction of such a sobering story is. It’s always a challenge conveying a story with so many pieces missing, and it doesn’t quite land on this occasion.

A touching story that doesn’t quite let audiences into its heart, Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang is a beautifully haunting picture with a myriad of underlying issues. While some will instantaneously be able to connect to letters long lost, a wider mainstream audience may have more of a problem. Embodying Marcelle’s continued sense of feeling invincible, the sporadic lack of cohesion ultimately hinders her story from being accessed in a befitting way.