Movie Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

By Lisa Anderson

The vampire movie renaissance, of which Let Me In was the high point and Priest may have been the low point, appeared to be drawing to a close. Then in late 2013, Director Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes) came out with Only Lovers Left Alive. This moody, atmospheric, bohemian tale pleased both critics and fans alike, especially the built-in fanbases of its leads, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. However, underneath the dark rock-guitar score, the musings about art, and the familiar vampire lore, there’s something more going on. Only Lovers Left Alive is, at its heart, a movie about marriage.

As the film opens, Hiddleston’s Adam and Swinton’s Eve are living far apart, he in Detroit and she in Tangier. We see that neither of them kills to survive at the moment, but rather, obtain blood illicitly from the medical industry. We also see that she’s much happier than he is; while Eve goes out and socializes with the vampiric Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), Adam holes up in his house as much as possible, having instruments and other things delivered to him by a naive but affable “rock-n-roll kid” named Ian (Anton Yelchin). Ian doesn’t know what Adam is, so doesn’t think anything of it when Adam commissions a wooden bullet for an alleged art project.

We first learn that Adam and Eve are married when they speak via a jury-rigged videoconference. It turns out that humanity, with all its wars and increasingly unpalatable blood, has really gotten him down. Eve remains upbeat, assuring him that vampire kind has seen worse, and that things move in cycles. When he tells her that he hasn’t been making music, however, she realizes that he’s in dire straits, and hurries to rejoin him as soon as she can. They enjoy each other’s company for a while, until an unsolicited visit from Eve’s sister Eva (Mia Wasikowska) disrupts their world all over again.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a non-traditional vampire film in many ways, which may make it easier for more sensitive viewers to watch. The pacing is not as brisk as audiences today are used to, and the only two instances of vampiric violence happen off screen. More familiar are the rules these vampires operate by: they avoid sunlight out of necessity, for example, and consider it bad luck to enter a home without invitation, even among each other. Jarmusch makes the lore his own without rewriting it. The one flourish he adds is that they can intuit an amazing amount of information through their bare hands, and usually wear gloves in public as a result.

Since vampires are also associated, at least in the past few centuries, with the dynamic tension between sex and death, viewers can be forgiven for expecting a love scene in Lovers—especially with two such visually compelling leads. There is none, though, another thing which makes it a different kind of vampire film. Nevertheless, Hiddleston and Swinton manage to radiate both sensuality and intimacy. Once reunited, they frequently cuddle closely or lounge languidly across each other, on equal footing at first, then with her in protective postures once their circumstances become more dangerous. We see them hold hands and kiss spontaneously. This easy physicality poses the same question as the circa-1800s wedding photo we see Adam pick up: What does marriage look like when it lasts for hundreds of years?

As it turns out, vampire marriage looks, in a lot of ways, like marriage usually does. In Only Lovers Left Alive, we see how when you marry someone, you marry their issues as well. “Can’t you tell your wife what your problem is?” Eve asks the depressed Adam early on. We also see the ways in which marriage means being connected to your spouse’s family (Eva) and their friends (Ian). Toward the end, they even share the burden of grief as married people do.

The film’s take on matrimony is not all negative, though, by any means. Adam and Eve are perfectly content in each other’s company, playing chess, talking, and driving aimlessly around Detroit. Eventually, the perennially optimistic Eve is able to pull her husband out of his gloom. They find themselves in danger as the story advances because they have cast their lot with each other, but we trust that they will both survive for exactly the same reason.

You may have heard a lot of good things about Only Lovers Left Alive already, and they’re all true. Viewers have called it “sensual” and “decadent,” and yes, the richness of Tangier and the decay of Detroit provide the perfect backdrop for the chemistry between Swinton and Hiddleston. Critics have recognized it as a meditation on art and science, with Adam as the producer and Eve as the consumer (in an interesting reversal of the power dynamic of their relationship.) But it’s also a look at what happens when deathless beings take part in a timeless institution.

Only Lovers Left Alive will be available from Sony Pictures on Blu-Ray and DVD on August 19.