Review by Nia Edwards-Behi
Clara (Gemma Arterton) and her daughter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are forced to begin a new life in a dreary seaside town after Clara murders a man who pursued them at their former dwelling. Clara, now selling herself on the street, takes advantage of down-and-out Noel (Daniel Mays), by taking over his ruined guest-house and transforming it into a brothel. As Clara earns their keep, Eleanor wanders the town, and meets Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), a sickly young man who finds himself instantly attracted to the quiet, mysterious Eleanor. Eleanor tries to stay away, as she is increasingly tempted to spill her secret.
Clara and Eleanor are more than 200 years old, and survive by drinking the blood of other humans. As the film progresses we learn more and more about the two women’s pasts, as Clara was forced into a life of prostitution by an unscrupulous army officer (Johnny Lee Miller), and finds an escape from her life through the apparently kinder soldier Davelle (Sam Riley). She reunites with Eleanor, whom she had given up to a better life at an orphanage, and the two have since been running for their lives.
It’s fair to say that Byzantium is not a cheery film. For all its colours and bright lights, the tone is sombre, and all its characters are miserable. However, that’s not to say that the film is without humour. There’s a fine thread of morbid, blacker-than-black humour in the film, usually stemming from Clara. However, this is a film imbued with misery – so not some three-act tale that trundles toward a tragic and sad ending. There isn’t any genuine happiness to be found, though there are facades, and there are moments of relief, or of rest, or of potential. This sense of sadness is constantly underlined by the film’s setting. Set in a nameless seaside town, it constantly rains, the pier is dilapidated and the streets and buildings grey and anonymous. There is some warmth to be found inside buildings, such as in the town’s college, but we get only glimpses at these spaces, and they are soon infected by the misery that surrounds Eleanor and Clara.
The mother-daughter pair central to the film is perhaps the first of its kind in what’s ostensibly a vampire film. Their relationship is tempestuous to say the least, the two women screaming at each other at times, yells of “I hate you!” from Eleanor befitting any teenage tantrum. Clara is fiercely protective of Eleanor, for reasons we see revealed as the film goes on. She is ruthless in her desire to keep her daughter safe and sheltered, while Eleanor wants nothing more than for her mother to give her a better life. They are diametrically contrasted: Clara is the whore, the profession forced upon her 200-odd years ago now, literally, in her blood; while Eleanor, raised in a strict orphanage knows nothing but modesty and the desire to be truthful and good. However, as we see them in the present both women are monsters, too, and equally as dangerous. Although Eleanor is figured as ‘the innocent’, and the death she doles out apparently merciful, she is much less in control of herself than Clara. Indeed, Clara lies and kills out of necessity, while Eleanor seems to kill out of boredom.
It’s notable that as ‘monsters’ Clara and Eleanor aren’t especially super-human, nor are they sub-human. They’re really still quite like all the mortals around them, only they’ve been allowed to step out of the realm of time. This is clearest when considering the human characters in the film. Noel is stricken by grief, and desperate as a result, and likewise Frank is stricken by disease. The two men are affected by time in a very different way to Clara and Eleanor, so while the women are frozen outside of it, the men are experiencing the ruthless way in which it passes. The apart-ness of the women is again emphasised through the film’s cinematography and direction. Again and again throughout the film the women are seen either as reflections in mirrors or they are distorted behind panes of glass.
For all its stunning visuals and cinematography – and it truly is jaw-droppingly stunning at times – this film is a character study, and it has the cast to pull it off. In the lead roles Arterton and Ronan are really superb. I’ve no doubt that Ronan will get a lot of the praise, for once more playing a young character older than her years, but Arterton steals the show as Clara. Much of the marketing of the film seems to have focused on the fact that she’s sexy (well duh), but the subtlety of her performance is wonderful. At times, and sometimes all at once, alluring, threatening, broken and hysterical, she entirely convinces as a 200 year old woman who seemingly saved herself from victimhood. It must be said that Landry Jones once again stands out, with a somewhat bizarre and yet for me entirely convincing performance as Frank. It’s interesting to note that he’s yet again playing a sickly character – following Antiviral – so it’ll be nice to see him tackle something different at some point too (as an aside, I’m quite sad he doesn’t seem to be reprising his role as Banshee in the upcoming X-Men sequel). The rest of the main cast – Mays, Riley and Miller – give impressive turns too, Riley perhaps the most short-changed of the lot with the least to do.
Byzantium is probably one of the best horror films I’ve seen so far this year; it’s a refreshingly detailed and rich horror film that at once plays with tradition while offering something new, so it’s quite a shame that it hasn’t had a better reception so far. It’s not often we’re treated to an intelligent and beautiful horror film that gets a mainstream release, so it’s a shame that it seems to have been squandered somewhat – seeming to have been snatched from cinemas as soon as it was released. I truly hope that by the time the film hits DVD it will find an appreciative audience, as it deserves to be seen and adored.