Only Lovers Left Alive

Jim Jarmusch reveals his characteristic rock ’n roll cool in the vampire genre with this offbeat and murky, atmospheric duet for Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as eternal lovers. Adam lives in Detroit, Eve in Tangiers - in the ruins of an industrial and a preindustrial world. As a result, it looks as if the story is set beyond time. Adam shrouds himself in a poète-maudit style (à la Gus Van Sant’s Last Days) in an old mansion and fills his days playing old analogue instruments. Through the eternal night of the film, Eve comes looking for him. It’s obvious they belong together, even though they spend most of their time in their own territory. Jarmusch does not shirk the style emblems of vampire films, for instance the hunt for blood, but takes a playful turn with them. The film consciously surfs on the waves of genre clichés, and in this way takes the vampire film to new heights.