Jordan dives again into the vampire genre, after his 1994 Masterpiece Interview With The Vampire comes this new and innovative film.
The story centers around Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) and her mother Clara (Gemma Artenton) who are both vampires. Their bond is strong, they have been travelling for many years and centuries, trying to escape the mysterious 'brotherhood' who wants to destroy them. Clara and Eleanor pose as sisters, Eleanor acts like the typical 16 year old and Clara brings the money by selling her body, something she does well and has always done even before her transformation. They come into a seaside town that Eleanor recognizes from her childhood.
As vampires, they are different to the typical creatures of the night that we've all encountered: they can walk in the daylight, they have no fangs, they are immortal and need to feed on blood still. The way they do that is with a fingernail that grows into a sharp talon to pierce the skin of their victims.
Clara feeds on men who pay to have sex with her or on pimps, thinking her actions are justifiable as the world would be better without men like them. Eleanor feeds on the old and dying, people who are asking for release. Like an angel she goes to them and says 'Peace be with you, may light shine upon you. Forgive me for what I must do.' Despite the vampires in this film not possessing the typical characteristics of common vampires, they still need to be invited into houses.
The vampire transformation is a very interesting one, it requires a human who is sick and dying to be approached by the 'brotherhood' a coven of only male vampires. They give directions to an abandoned island where the man must enter a small cave and emerge later as a vampire while the waterfall behind the cave turns blood red, signalling the success of the transformation.
Much like Louis from Interview with the Vampire Eleanor hates her existence and the life of a nomad, she starts to hate her mother for the job she does; setting up a brothel and picking up prostitutes off the street to work in it. Eleanor longs for companionship and to tell her story, instead of finding a journalist like Louis, she writes into a diary and always rips the pages off. One day she meets Frank (Caleb Landry Jones) who has Leukemia and falls in love. She enrolls into the local college with him and for homework she must write her story, she writes everything about what she is and gives it to Frank. Her act is considered dangerous and foolish but somehow we viewers sympathize as she is bored and lonely and wants a change.
The film has many stylish flashbacks detailing the story of how Clara who as a young girl during the Napoleonic wars was forced into prostitution by Captain Ruthven (Johnny Lee Miller).
I find the choice of character name very interesting here. Perhaps it is an homage to the iconic vampire and sexual fiend from Polidori's novella The Vampyre. Polidori's character was modeled on Byron. Another homage to a great literary vampire is when Clara goes under the alias 'Carmilla' from the famous Le Fanu novella. As well as reinventing the vampire genre, this film contains wonderful homages and references to the first vampires of Gothic literature. In her essay, Eleanor mentions the word 'soucriant' which is the name of a vampiric creature from Trinidad, Guadeloupe and Dominica, there is no reference to Caribbean mythology in the movie itself and the vampires' origin is hinted as pre-Christian European. Eleanor befriends an old man who quickly notices what she is as he has picked up her diary pages that she was throwing to the wind. He talks of a story he heard as a boy about the 'neahm-mhairbh' or revenants, creatures neither dead nor alive. Upon research of that word I came across a reference to a story in Irish Folklore about Abhartach who was an evil dwarf and sorcerer who always rose from the dead and drank human blood. This story may have inspired Bram Stoker.
Clara became pregnant with Eleanor and gave her away, she later 'turned' her daughter and they began their life on the run.
The actors are perfect and beautiful, especially Sam Riley as Darvell the new member of the brotherhood who always pitied Clara. Gemma is magnificent as a prostitute and mother as ferocious and protective as a mother lion. Saorsie is also superb as the teenage vampire stuck in this young body. Her hatred and how she lashes out at her mother, reminds me of the scenes of little vampire Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. The typical child who despises her 'parents'. Except that Eleanor is more calm. The setting and scenes of the seaside town, which is set in Hastings, gives off a very beautiful and melancholic vibe, all this is filmed perfectly.
The film is solid, impeccably acted and full of suspense.
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