Review: ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’

Jim Jarmusch epitomizes cool. And with his take on the vampire genre, even bloodsucking can be made hip for a new generation.

Living apart for now, eternal lovers Adam and Eve drift through their separate nighttime worlds. Eve is in Tangiers, where she comes literature and collects blood to feed on from an ancient Christopher Marlowe (yes, that Christopher Marlowe). Meanwhile, Adam is hiding out in Detroit, where he makes music as he has done for centuries – at one stage mentioning he wrote an adagio for Schubert.

Adam is growing weary of his immortality and commissions a wooden bullet to be made, hoping to leave the endless nights and a world populated by “zombies” (what he calls humans) behind. Eve is far more integrated into the modern world and so she heads to Detroit in order to pull Adam out of his funk.

When the pair get together, their devotion to each other is clear. There is something deliciously poignant about the way they play out their version of eternal love. She’s the witty raconteur, while he’s the silent type who allows her words to bounce off him.

But when Eve’s rather feckless sister shows up, things become strained and the pair find their bond tested for the first time.

There isn’t much plot here. It’s almost as if we’ve been dropped into their lives and allowed to stay for a prescribed length of time. But Adam and Eve are so fascinating that the lack of traditional plot doesn’t matter, and the references to science, politics, history and music, make perfect sense to lives that have stretched for centuries.

The soundtrack is, like in all Jarmusch films, essential and effortlessly cool. And seriously, why has no one else thought to set vampire fiction in Detroit? There is something about that city’s derelict grandeur that feels as right for the undead as New Orleans’ peeling glamour was for Anne Rice’s vampires.

Extremely witty and always clever, Only Lovers Left Alive was my favorite film at last year’s New Zealand International Film Festival. And, after the lacklustre Limits of Control, has restored my faith in Jarmusch as the coolest director ever.

9/10

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