It has been a long time since we had a truly high quality vampire story. Between the weepy sparkles of Twilight and the angst-ridden vamps of True Blood et al, I had begun to worry that the time of the vampire had passed. Who would have thought that director Jim Jarmusch would be the one to give me hope for the vampire genre?
Today, we have the first international trailer for the director’s vampire love story Only Lovers Left Alive, and it is one of the most provocative things I’ve seen in quite awhile.
Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are the vampire lovers Adam and Eve (oh my). They live on different continents, but it appears that they’ve found each other again…and why not? They’re obviously made for each other; just look at those cheekbones. Things hit a rough patch for the couple when Adam’s sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska, rounding out the cheekbone trifecta) reappears in their lives. John Hurt is also on hand, looking altogether too gleeful to be drinking blood.
But this film is obviously not about the plot; it’s about the lyricism of Jarmusch’s filmmaking. The trailer is gorgeous, giving us all-too-brief scenes of the vampires and their world. Hiddleston and Swinton look beautiful together, and the momentary glimpses we have of Wasikowska and Hurt are intriguing. If this is anything like the rest of Jarmusch’s work, we are in for a fascinating, bizarre and intelligent cinematic experience. It has been too long since we had one of those.
There’s no US release date for Only Lovers Left Alive, but the film did make a good showing at Cannes, Toronto, and New York. I’ll cross my fingers and hope that it receives a wide release.
Check out the new trailer below, then let us know what you think about Jarmusch’s latest in the comments.
