Only Lovers Left Alive – A Review

Tom Hiddleston alone is reason to watch this movie. His character, Adam, is a Only lovers left alive hero, a dark, moody rock musician vampire, sick of  destructive  humanity and of life itself. But his wife, Eve, sensing his depression leaves her home in Tangiers to be with him in Detroit. Slow paced, the movie is a visual delight. Modern Detroit is a haunting, gothic backdrop to the story. The perfectly matched, elegant physical beauty of Hiddleston and Swinton makes them the perfect pair to play  sophisticated vampires. Both Hiddleston and Swinton move with a languid grace as if they had all the time in the world.  These long-lived vampires have spent centuries immersed in the arts and sciences. They do everything exceptional well. They create beautiful music, influence great artists and learn science through the ages. They can speak and read a multitude of languages. Eve packs books for trip rather than clothes. In fact, they do everything well except dance. They can’t dance for shit. Adam and Eve have a deeply romantic relationship and a soul connection. Despite a 20 year age gap, Swinton and Hiddleston lit up the screen with their sexual chemistry. The music was incredible.  There are subtle touches which I love, Adam’s musical studio with its out-dated equipment reminded me of Frankenstein’s lab. And have I mentioned Hiddleston’s stand out performance bringing to life a multifaceted Adam, who could be the self-pitying, depressed artist to the ardent lover to the calculating. His final words in the movie, “I get the girl” was a chilling combination of sexuality and violence.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s