Review by Tristan Bishop
Even as a fan of director Jim Jarmusch – his 90s efforts Dead Man (1995) and Ghost Dog (1999) are among my favourite films – I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down in my seat at the prospect of Only Lovers Left Alive. The undoubtedly top-notch cast didn’t gloss over the fact that this was a love story about vampires, and I generally like my vampires to be sexy and animalistic creatures, ready to have you submit to their will and rip out your throat at a moment’s notice, rather than sensitive souls mooching lovelorn in the moonlight, and whilst in recent years TV’s True Blood (alongside Xan Cassavette’s underrated Kiss Of The Damned) has managed to walk a fine line between humanising and demonising vamps, Jarmusch isn’t really known for piling on the sex ‘n’ blood.
Adam and Eve (played by the ever-so-good-looking pairing of Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) are a couple who have been married for a very long time. Not only are they both vampires, but they also live a long way apart – Eve resides in the hazy, maze-like environs of Tangier (surely a nod to Naked Lunch-era William Burroughs), where anything is available on any street corner (including, it seems, high grade supplies of blood), and Adam prefers to dwell in run-down suburban Detroit – a once-great city of industry and music – where he barricades himself in his home with a collection of out-dated technology and antique guitars, venturing out only to a local hospital to score the red stuff. There’s seemingly no lack of love with the couple, despite the distance between them, but Adam is at a low point; commissioning a bullet made of wood from the ‘rock & roll kid’ who supplies his ancient instruments, he has obviously decided to end it all, and even the music he makes has become ‘funeral music’. Cue a trip from Eve across the Atlantic to see if she can bring Adam around to the joys of life (or, more correctly, un-death).
Let’s get this out of the way first, for those seeking hot bloody vampire action – there is no sex or violence in this film, although there is one (non-sexual) scene with the main characters naked in bed, and one bloody aftermath of a vampire attack, but that’s your lot. What we get instead is a grown-up, low-key film about the ability of love. Starring two incredibly pretty people who happen to be vampires. Of course, there’s a metaphor going on here – the vampires are cultural movers and shakers behind the scenes – with suggestions that they may have been the real talents behind famous musical and written works of the past, feeling isolated from humankind (who they tellingly and ironically refer to as ‘zombies’), struggling to live with addiction (the blood/drug metaphor has been well overdone but thankfully is handled subtly here) and find meaning in a world not made for them. It’s not too much of a stretch that Jarmusch might be doing some veiled autobiography here.
All this might make the film sound like a bit of a pretentious wallow, but it isn’t, due to Jarmusch’s own script sparkling with warmth and ironic wit, delivered perfectly by the leads, who possess a rare chemistry which makes you buy into their relationship completely. Theirs is not the only tangible love affair in the film however: Jarmusch’s famous love of music permeates nearly every scene from the stunningly atmospheric score by the director’s own band SQURL, to a a great scene featuring Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan, through to various great old country, blues and soul tunes featured in various scenes. The film’s primary setting of Detroit is a give-away here: a city responsible at least partially – via Motown, garage punk, techno and the blues revival of The White Stripes – for many of America’s most exciting musical movements of the 20th century, now lying uninhabited for vast stretches, the character of Adam makes his home in a living museum of American culture’s golden age.
As if this wasn’t enough the icing on the cake comes from some stunning, painterly cinematography by Yorick Le Saux and two excellent supporting performances from Mia Wasikowska as Eve’s wild child sister Ava, who arrives at Adam’s home, causing much unrest (in a similar, although far less sultry, role as Roxane Mesquida in Kiss Of The Damned), and the great John Hurt, playing Eve’s Tangier neighbour Christopher Marlowe (yes, that Christopher Marlowe).
Only Lovers Left Alive is that rarest of things – a love story which manages to be convincing, unsentimental, ironic and uplifting. If you’re a cynical horror fan with a secret romantic core then if gets my highest recommendation.
Only Lovers Left Alive is released to DVD and Blu-ray on 15th September, from Soda Pictures.