"Byzantium" (2013)

Vampires have to be one of the most miserable fictional creations. The world changes, people die, but they remain the same, infinitely stuck at the point they were sired. Vampires, of the modern Anne Rice conception, don’t experience things so intensely because they have heightened senses, but because after 200 years of loss and regret they have to live life with an intense passion or else they might as well feel numb. Vampires are nothing less than manic depressives with a blood addiction. Byzantium is about how isolating this type of existence must be -- constantly moving, barely making connections, and debasing oneself to survive in a world that would hunt you down if it knew your secrets. Byzantium may be romanticized, but it’s far from romantic; this is brutal, unforgiving world that occasionally is sexy in that way moping loners can sometimes be. Director Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire) and cinematographer Sean Bobbit create a film that tonally aches with unbearable, unrequited yearning. It’s the film’s exquisite longing that make it feel worth inhabiting even when its plotting and pacing feel a little out of sorts. The film is mired, particularly in the middle, in a series of clumsily handled flashbacks depicting the terrible life events that have made the film’s two characters, mother and daughter vampire duo Clara and Eleanor (Gemma Arterton, proudly using her looks as a potent asset and weapon, and Saoirse Ronan), such passionate brooders. What sets apart Byzantium from most vampire tales though is its emphasis on the desires and troubles of female vampires first and foremost. The story uses its vampire trappings to hone in on the exploitation and mistreatment of women across the centuries. While that might sound too broad or under thought, and it occasionally is, the film finds way to show the complicity, as well as the empowerment, of its characters in the systems that limit them. But before I get too serious and overwrought: Byzantium is primarily a moody, sensuous vampire story. It's a high melodrama about characters with passions and temperaments that are volatile and intoxicating in equal measure. And that is an under-appreciated pleasure all its own.

Grade: ★★★