I apologize for the more than a month's silence, but life has been getting in the way of my blogging. Excuses, excuses. But I'm here now.
I might have the great privilege of seeing Neil Jordan's latest film Byzantium, a vampire flick starring Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan and Sam Riley. The last time I saw Arterton, she was causing social havoc in Stephen Frears' Tamara Drewe (2010), and I loved her for it. I think she's a truly formidable actress with an impressive artistic range (see The Disappearance of Alice Creed and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for more details).
Now, let's have a look at how vampire flicks have evolved since the genre rose from the dead (no pun intended) - from the 1922 German film Nosferatu, which I have seen a fair amount of and was terrified by it, to the very appealing performance by Gary Oldman as Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula (1992), vampires have always held a certain fascination for me. How could they not? They are mischievous, dark and terribly alluring.
This sentiment was then colossally diminished by the heresy committed on the genre that is the Twilight saga. I believe that there is no place for childish, naive women here. I say that with the full knowledge that Gary Oldman's love interest Mina can among other things be considered as such, nevertheless, Coppola's film is not directed towards a "13 year old girls" crowd. This is the key factor in my argument. The market for the vampire film should exclusively be the keen intellectual who can spot and identify references within the genre in literature and painting as well as merely in cinema(Carmilla, the first official vampire novel, written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu for example). Twilight with its clumps of screaming teenage girls have made a mockery of what "vampire" stands for. Even so, I recognize and maintain that the best thing to come out of this gibe are the Cullens, the vampire family. They're objectified, admired and somewhat shunned by the mere mortals, as they should.
I can not wait to see what Jordan has in store for the audiences of Byzantium. I do hope I'll like it, I'm a massive Neil Jordan fan - his work is the perfect balance between serious, cheeky and purely heart-breaking (remember The End of The Affair, Breakfast on Pluto and finally the very relevant Interview with The Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles?).
But I still have not encountered a vampire film that could beat my ultimate favourite of the genre: Dennis Gansel's Wir Sind Die Nacht (2010), a tale of three beautiful vampiresses who welcome an 18 year old "newborn" into their midst after their leader, the deadly Louise, falls in love (and lust) with her. Conflict, mutations and flawless pandemonium ensue. A true hell raiser.
