Vampires have never appeared as cool, cultured, or frankly, human, as they do in Jim Jarmusch’s romantic-comedy drama "Only Lovers Left Alive," which screened late last week at the Toronto Film Festival, Julie Miller reports in Vanity Fair. Jarmusch, the celebrated indie director, shot much of the film in Detroit's Brush Park neighborhood.
"Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton star as Adam and Eve, a pair of sophisticated, centuries-old blood suckers who would put any of your mainstream vamps to shame during a round of Double Jeopardy—not just because of their intellects (no offense, Edward) but because they’ve interacted with history’s greats and live to tell the tales, such as how Adam, a musician, once gave Schubert a String Quartet. In one of many self-consciously clever lines in the film, Eve blames the modern-day stigma against vampires on 'Shelly, Byron, and those French assholes I used to hang around with.' ”
"Only Lovers Left Alive" tells the story of Adam and Eve, who are what Miller calls "married loners" living on different continents. Eve (Tilda Swinton) is in Morocco, "where she goes on slow-motion midnight strolls to fetch more blood." Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is bummed out by the idiocy of the “zombie” humans around him, "has moved to a city that seems to have been abandoned by humans altogether: Detroit."
"He spends his afternoons languishing in the isolation of his windows-drawn existence, until Eve, on an iPhone video chat, decides to pack up her favorite books ("The Infinite Jest," "Don Quixote") and fly to Detroit (night flights only, please) to once again revive Adam’s spirit."
Miller concludes: "There’s no finale or climax to the film, but Jarmusch’s meandering and refreshingly original take on vampires in the post-Twilight era is satisfying enough."
