Gothic Romance:Only Lovers Left Alive (Dir Jim Jarmusch, 2h3m, 2013)

Perhaps the ultimate Gothic Romance is that of the vampire. Small wonder: the creature enters literature on the same bank of Lake Geneva as the other great figure of 19th Century Gothic literature, and its genesis, as Lord Ruthven, is a thinly veiled jab at the same Lord Bryon who would influence and act as template for so many Gothic (anti)-heroes. Ever since, the Vampire has dwelt in the realms of sex, blood and death, between sexualised predator (see, for example, the equally seminal "Carmilla" by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1871), the multiple Christopher Lee-starring Hammer Horror incarnations of the Count, most notably Dracula, (1958), and Gary Oldman's gentleman-cum-creep in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula), and tortured romantic outsiders; Tom Cruise's Lestat, Keifer Sutherland's band of vampiric goths in The Lost Boys (1987) and David Bowie's elegant sophisticate in The Hunger. (1983)

Cinema of the late 2000s and early 2010s when it comes to the Vampire is dominated, inevitably, with the possible exception of Tomas Alfredsson's beautifully chilling Let the Right One In and diminishing returns for the fun, dumb, and ultra-slick Underworld series, with the Twilight franchise (2008-2011), a decidedly bloodless if harmless teenage franchise largely now famous for giving Kristen Stewart and especially Robert Pattinson the platform to go off and do far more experimental fare on a tenth of the budget. Into this house comes Only Lovers Left Alive, an ultra-cool, understated and decidedly more sanguine take on Nosferatu, from one of my favourite directors, Jim Jarmusch. 

Adam (Tom Hiddleston), introduced as a reclusive rockstar in a decaying Detroit, and Eve (Tilda Swinton), whose first scenes are in the nighttime streets of Tangier, where she reads and keeps the elderly, also now vampiric figure of Christopher Marlowe (a scene-stealing performance from John Hurt), it is their romance, or what remains of it, that drives this film. Adam is the archetypical Gothic figure, playing antique guitars and crafting music in a house that is positively a reliquary, a figure who claims to have no heroes, but whose walls are decorated with portraits of them, Jarmusch's love of musicians and music-making palpable- his own band SQÜRL, alongside lute-player and composer Jozef van Wissem, and Lebanese singer, Yasmine Hamdan, who appears as herself in a crucial scene, soundtracking the film.

Yet, Adam is a character of paradox: he dismisses humans as "zombies", including the fans that haunt the otherwise abandoned landscape his house is in, and his lackey, the well-meaning but naive Ian (Anton Yelchin), who brings him priceless instruments and acts as his distributor; yet he despairs of the human friends he has lost, most notably Nikola Tesla, whose work and ideas rear their head in ways utterly at odds with this ultra-analogue figure. Eve for her part is introduced into the film in a place stuffed with books, and here, again, Jarmusch's eye for detail is seen in a wordless sequence of Eve packing her suitcases, flicking across texts from Infinite Jest and Endgame to Kafka and Arab love poetry; there is this love, seen again and again through the film, for the tactile, the real, the innately human, that these two vampires, reliant on bloodbank robbery and bribery rather than hunting human prey, are clearly in love with.  

Adam's solipsism and his slow descent into despair - one of his first scenes with Ian is the vampire trying to get hold of a wooden bullet, its intent clear - is the Gothic condition writ large: the tortured poet or rockstar. There is, certainly a sense of the Lestat of Rice's later novels, the Byronic, but much of this is tempered by Eve's arrival, her clear care for her husband, indicating, at one point, "This self obsession is a waste of living, It could be spent surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing". Swinton's all-white appearance, her connections to Marlowe, to the Tangiers local, Bilal, who cares for the elderly vampire, is clear, but her outlook, even after the arrival of her chaotic sister, Ava, (an enjoyably petulant Mia Wasikowska, half Gothic nightmare, half-spoiled brat), is more hopeful, her belief in love, and her lover, palpable.

What one takes away from Only Lovers Left Alive is a sense of beauty, of two figures enduring despite the rot around them. One of the Detroit sequences travels through a city falling apart at the seams, derelict and yet, as they pause underneath the canopy of the once-magnificent, still spectacular Michigan Theater, Yorick Le Saux's camera tilting skyward, this battered and deindustrialised city is still beautiful, despite it all. There is always, Jarmusch seems to say, and repeats it in the film's dénouement, among stunning Arab architecture and the docks of Tangiers, something to live for, be it music, or books, or a lover, or simply as Eve puts it, dancing. 

Only Lovers Left Alive is many things: a dark comedy about a murderous vampiric couple who seem beholden to art and its makers, a Gothic love story between old, weary travellers, or reflects Jim Jarmusch's unapologetic aestheticism. What it certainly is is a smart, funny, and often archly Gothic take on a familiar staple of the genre, as only one of America's master film-makers can craft them.

Rating: Must See

Only Lovers Left Alive is available to buy on BluRay from SODA Pictures and is available to stream in the UK from the BFI Player

Next week, to the master of the Gothic himself, as we consider Guillermo Del Toro's loveletter to Gothic romance, Crimson Peak