American indie auteur Jim Jarmusch has a distinct and recognisable style, which has hardly changed over the years as his films shift location, genre and theme. It’s present and correct in his latest, a spin on the vampire tale which somehow manages to breathe life back into the most (un)dead of tropes.
The biggest draw for the film is its central pairing of Jarmsuch regular Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, playing immortal couple Eve and Adam who’ve been living apart for years. Swinton’s typically pale, otherworldly presence is a perfect fit for the character and tone; and Hiddleston exhibits a langourous rock star charisma that’s midway between Byron and Bowie.
The film opens with Eve living in Tangiers, hanging out with Christopher Marlowe (a raffish John Hurt). Adam, a recluse who records ambient compositions and sends them anonymously out into the world, is holed up in Detroit (his only reaction to his music’s growing fame: “What a drag”). The vampire as superannuated hipster, bored with the modern world, isn’t exactly a new conceit, but Hiddleston plays his character’s studied detachment in a knowing, funny way. To him, humans are “zombies”; slow-moving, dull-witted, spreading across the planet while his kind hide in the shadows.
Jeffrey Wright has an entertaining cameo as the doctor who sells Hiddleston samples of O-negative.
The plot, such as it is, begins with Eve travelling from Tangiers to Detroit, taking a series of night flights across the world to reunite with Adam. Their routine is interrupted by the arrival of Eve’s sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska). Perpetually preserved in the guise of a teenage girl, she’s a fun-loving but dangerous troublemaker, who eventually tilts the equilibrium of the couple’s lives.
Rather than actually biting people to get their fix, which is seen as rather uncouth, most of the vampires live off stolen medical supplies: Jeffrey Wright has an entertaining cameo as the doctor who sells Hiddleston samples of O-negative. The vampirism-as-addiction parallel has also been done before, but the film takes this conceit into the visual realm, giving us TRAINSPOTTING-inspired floating shots of the characters relaxing in bliss after a hit of blood.
The film as a whole is suspended in a thick, narcotic pall, thanks to cinematographer Yorick Le Saux. Characters are shot from high above as the camera revolves, creating a woozy, disorienting atmosphere. Jarmusch’s band SQÜRL provide the soundtrack of ambient, abstract guitar tones. The lethargic yet ominous mood is the perfect backdrop to the never-ending night these louche bloodsuckers call home.
The beating heart of Eve and Adam’s relationship helps to ground the archness in recognisable emotion.
You could search for hints of commentary in Jarmusch’s portrayal of Detroit as a crumbling ruin similar to the European vampire haunts of old Hollywood , but it seems far more likely that he’s playing with his own retro-cool fetishisation of the past. With their vintage guitars, vinyl records, and big Ray-bans, his vampires are connoisseurs who pore over human history looking for collector’s items.
It’s a deep, stylish mood piece where atmosphere is all. The languid pacing may be off-putting to some, but the true focus of the film is hanging out with the lovers, who have (literally) all the time in the world. The beating heart of Eve and Adam’s relationship helps to ground the archness in recognisable emotion. With its sumptuous visuals and darkly humourous bite of an ending, ONLY LOVERS puts old clichés through their paces and shows that they aren’t so creaky after all.
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