Susan Granger’s review of “Byzantium” (IFC Films)
Am I the only one who is vampire’d out? With Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” film franchise spawning a next generation and Charlaine Harris’s gore-laden fantasy “True Blood” continuing on television, enough is enough…or not.
Now, 17 years after adapting Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire,” Irish-born filmmaker Neil Jordan once again ventures into the gothic melodrama genre, traveling back and forth between past and present-day vampirism.
Two mysterious women, Cockney Clara Webb (Gemma Arterton) and her demure daughter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan), seek sanctuary in a run-down British seaside resort, where morose Noel (Daniel Mays) allows them to stay in his dilapidated, deserted Byzantium Hotel, which brassy Clara quickly transforms into a make-shift brothel. When quiet, introspective Eleanor befriends Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), who is pale and terminally ill with leukemia, she confides the haunting secret of their eternal affliction: they were born 200 years ago and survive on human blood. Using her retractable, pointed thumbnail, as opposed to fangs, Eleanor actually prefers the blood of the elderly, who welcome her with relief and gratitude. But brusque, uneducated Clara is determined to maintain a familial bond of silence, since mysterious pursuers (Sam Riley, Uri Gavriel) from a male brotherhood of vampires is after them. Not surprisingly, when townspeople start to die, the immortal past that they have been running from for so long, finally catches up with them.
Based on Moira Buffini’s 2008 play, “A Vampire’s Story,” and scripted by Buffini (“Tamara Drewe,” “Jane Eyre”) with director Neil Jordan, it’s lushly photographed by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, stressing moody, romantic imagery over stark horror in this convoluted story-within-a story, dating back to the Napoleonic Wars, when Clara was forced into prostitution by a sinister Navy captain (Jonny Lee Miller) and Eleanor was placed in an orphanage. Of course, since Neil Jordan is
involved, you know that Buffini’s evocative plot will take an unexpected, astonishing twist.
Shown in theaters and on-demand, nationwide, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Byzantium” is a bloodsucking 6, a curiously revisionist addition to the cult of the undead category.
