It’s been a long time since director Neil Jordan first
tackled the vampire genre with his now classic adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire
Chronicles (1994) but he’s now brought something new to the genre with his
equally inventive film Byzantium
(2013). Written by Moira Buffini and
based on her play “A Vampire Story” this is tale of two women cursed with
immortality in a world in which it is unlawful for women to be vampires.
Clara and her daughter Eleanor (Gemma Arterton and Saoirse
Ronan, respectfully) are on the run.
They’ve always been on the run and it is just another part of their
immortal life as vampires. Clara broke
the number rule of the vampire legion which is that there are no female
vampires. This hasn’t stopped her from
trying to give Eleanor a fruitful life.
She peddles her way in the underworld of street life finding victims
where the more polite society would never even notice anyone missing. Eleanor is a dreamer and just as she is
getting used to the monotony of her existence she suddenly falls for an ailing
human. This sets off a chain reaction
where their existence comes into jeopardy as they are being hunted down.
It’s actually quite hard to believe that this is in fact a
vampire film as Jordan and Buffini throw away all the conventional motifs for a
vampire film the most striking of which is how they are made and how they
feed. This is really a story of two
women with different ideologies living in a male dominated world and using
everything they have to survive and overcome adversity at every turn. Jordan’s cinematic style fits nicely with
this film in which the relationship between the main characters echoes the
trajectory of the relationship between the characters in his earlier film Interview With the Vampire. It’s uncanny how similar the two films are
alike.
The performances are also top notch as both Arterton and
Saoirse are magnificent together and are supported by an equally capable
cast. This film is a breath of fresh air
for the vampire genre and the genre as a whole which has not been in good
standing (in my opinion) especially since the majority now being released are
comedies and farces or bad action B-movies.
Jordan has not only produced another great film (among many) but one of
the better vampire films to be released in the last decade.
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