Are you a vampire geek? If so, how does a vampire in your fantasy look like? Kaname Kuran in Vampire Knight, Sorin Markov in Magic: The Gathering, or Eric Northman in True Blood? (Please click the return button on your browser if your answer is Mr. Edward Cullen aka Robert Pattinson.) If your dream fanged guy is cool, mysterious and a bit melancholic, then Tom Hiddleston, aka Adam in the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive, would be your new hottie.
[Spoiler Alert]
The title itself is pretty self-explanatory. Only lovers, precisely vampire lovers, could endure the endless flow of time. The story is about Adam, a somehow depressed talent musician, and his wife Eve (the brilliant Tilda Swinton), a lover of books and dances. Both of them were at least a few hundred years old, and had seen everything in human history. Adam, who had lost faith in humanity, hid himself in a mansion in the deserted Detroit, while Eve spent her nights in the artistic Tangier. One day, when Adam was imagining a suicide (I don’t think he really wants to do it) with a wooden bullet, Eve called. Then the couple met in Adam’s lair in Detroit and had some nice time together, such as enjoying blood popsicles.
The twist came when Eve’s younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) appears. The spoiled girl was pretty, and pretty troublesome – she consumed much of the couple’s blood stock, dragged them out of the house to a night club, brought a human back, and killed him (by drinking his blood, of course).
To avoid more troubles, Eve and Adam had to leave their secluded lair and fly to Tangier. Desperate with hunger, they were shocked to discover that their blood supplier Marlowe (also a vamp) was already on his deathbed, due to an intake of contaminated blood.
“What are we gonna do?”
(This is perhaps the weirdest line of the entire film as it was chanted by Eve and Adam at the same time, which is just odd lol.)
“What choice do we have?”
…Let’s drink some fresh blood in middle-age manner!
If you are into slow-paced films with underlying and often suppressed emotions, then Only Lovers Left Alive should be on your viewing list. It’s like a sweet and slow bite on the skin, where blood slowly permeates and drips down your throat. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are slender, elegant, with a formidable vamp cool that portraits the lengthy life of blood-sucking creatures really well. Not to mention the lovely melancholic look on Hiddleston - it’s just plain tasty. But if you’re just looking for a collection of quick vampire bites and fights, stay away and don’t bother. And as for me… more Adam please.