31 December 2014

Best of 2014: #10. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)


#10. Only Lovers Left Alive. Jim Jarmusch. UK/Germany/France/Greece/Cyprus.

Director Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise, Mystery Train, Dead Man) is no stranger to a certain kind of "cool," and it's probably no surprise that he managed to transport his signature love of dark music and deadpan delivery into a vampire tale. "Tale" might be misleading, as it's far more of "a brief episode in the eternal lives of two vampires in love," played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton (who also stole every scene in this year's Snowpiercer). Once you accept that Jarmusch is more concerned with the mood of his world (which bounces between Tangiers and Detroit) and the tools that his vampires use to occupy themselves in their eternity than he is with narrative conflict, Only Lovers Left Alive becomes a sumptuous little film with plenty of delights. Hiding behind sunglasses, Swinton with her long windswept white hair and Hiddleston with his rock star saunter are about as alluring a vampire couple as Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie were in The Hunger some thirty years earlier.


With: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi

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