Vampires infused with Type Zzz
The movie vampires of old could impart menace with the smallest gesture.
Without gory special effects, Max Schreck in Nosferatu or Bela Lugosi in Dracula were scary yet subtle on-screen.
In his latest film, Only Lovers Left Alive, writerdirector Jim Jarmusch delivers two descendants of Schreck and Lugosi. Although undead married couple Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) are proficient in Skype and hop on a jet to get to their destination, they have a lot in common with their understated predecessors.
Unfortunately, the film is too understated.
We first see Adam and Eve late at night in each of their apartments. (For no obvious reason, they live in contrasting cities: Adam has settled in Detroit and Eve in Tangier, Morocco.) The two seem to have passed out while listening to music. Meant as a mood setter, the scene lingers interminably. Only Lovers Left Alive. Directed by Jim Jarmusch.
(out of four)
R (for language, brief nudity) 2:03 at the Drexel and Lennox 24 theaters
Jarmusch is esteemed for a series of amusing comedies featuring similarly slothful, stone-faced protagonists — including Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law. True to his fashion, he intends Adam and Eve as sources of humor, not fright.
When not doing vampirish things, Adam is a hermitic musician who conducts his business through a lackey, Ian (Anton Yelchin). Some of their exchanges are worth a laugh, as when Adam asks Ian to find a wooden bullet for him.
“It’s for a project,” Adam explains vaguely. “A secret art project.”
On the other hand, the odor of a bad Saturday Night Live skit wafts in when Adam dons a surgeon’s scrubs and pays a nocturnal visit to a hospital to obtain blood. The joke is obvious: Modern vampires have to depend on chicanery and bribery to get what they need.
Also repetitive are scenes with Eve and her confidant — Christopher Marlowe, playwright and vampire. Played by John Hurt, Marlowe goes on about those he knew, including Shakespeare, and responds to a compliment about his waistcoat by commenting that he was given it in 1586.
“It’s one of my favorite garments,” he says.
Such anachronistic references are funny once but grow tiresome.
The liveliest passage comes when Eve’s sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), joins Adam and Eve in Detroit, creating an improbable sunglasses-andgloves-wearing trio. Ava is a more vivacious (and threatening) presence than her relatives.
“I might have been born at night,” she says, “but I wasn’t born last night.”
The film is depressing to look at. Far-off Tangier is glimpsed only fitfully, and the nightfall tour that Adam gives Eve of blighted Detroit isn’t an advertisement for the city’s tourism bureau.
“So this is your wilderness — Detroit,” Eve comments in the monotone that Swinton and the rest of the cast prefer.
These vampires aren’t deadly — just deadly dull.