Only Lovers Left Alive ** (2013, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin, Mia Wasikowska) – Movie Review

Only Lovers Left Alive tries to reinvent the vampire story and come up with some new mythology but it ends up being largely a load of camp nonsense as top Brit luvvies pretend to be vampires in Chicago and Tangier. There’s much too much vampire posing and too little undead nitty gritty. Didn’t cult writer-director Jim Jarmusch used to make great cult movies? Yes he did.

In Jarmusch’s story, underground musician Adam reunites with his centuries-old lover Eve. Like the rest of us, he’s a bit depressed with the direction human society has taken. Adam and Eve’s crazy idyll in Chicago is interrupted and tested by the arrival from LA of Eve’s even crazier sister Eva. She’s very thirsty and likes the look of a cute boy called Ian.

Tilda Swinton (Eve), Tom Hiddleston (Adam) and John Hurt (Kit Marlowe) certainly look right among the undead alright. They make perfect screen vampires. It’s not their fault at all. They’re entirely up for it. It’s the ponderous script without enough jokes and the plodding pace, and the fact that hardly anything happens in more than two hours. It has got a darkly playful sense of humour but it’s mostly well buried, and never laugh out loud.

Anton Yelchin (Ian, Adam’s non- vampire little helper) and Mia Wasikowska (Ava, Eve’s wild little sister) are rather good, but they don’t have a lot to do, unfortunately. Nor does Hurt, but he does quite enough as the dying playwright.

It’s all Swinton and Hiddleston, but they don’t ever have anything really interesting or noteworthy to do. And as a vampire story, this pretty much sucks. It’s all just eerie mood and decadent atmosphere, and no exciting biting. And that’s alright as far as it goes but it’s not nearly enough.

The soundtrack and visuals compensate a bit, but Only Lovers Left Alive is a struggle and a yawn at times.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Movie Review

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