THE ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (B+) - Jim Jarmusch creates the ultimate mood piece.
Don't expect much action in this high-brow vampire flick. Better yet, it's best to not expect any action at all. Instead, "Only Lovers" offers the ultimate cool hangout with a few hipster immortals, marking time as they traverse the centuries.
A few months ago, the Onion had a sharp piece of satire about God suffering from existential angst over his immortality -- staying awake all night, riddled with anxiety over the idea that he's never going to die. Here, indie legend Jarmusch ("Stranger Than Paradise," "Mystery Train," "Broken Flowers") sounds a similar riff, playing it half-serious and half-deadpan, exploring the joys of living forever (mastering Latin) and its pitfalls (unable to escape the culture).
Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are Eve and Adam, estranged lovers from way back (they know Christopher Marlowe, played here exquisitely by the ancient John Hurt and confirming once and for all that Shakespeare totally ripped him off). Adam is a musician struggling with his art and his place in the musical canon, but more important, he's jonesing for his old lady.
He's in Detroit, and she agrees to leave Tangier and reconnect in his gothic mansion in an abandoned neighborhood (a Detroit specialty). They drink primo, Grade A blood that she scored from Marlowe; they make love languidly; and they sleep all day, like vampires do. They catch the occasional rock-club show (with his stoner pal), where he's revered not unlike Jarmusch strolling through Sundance.
So, what happens? Eh, not much. Eve's sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) crashes the Detroit pad and stirs up trouble with her Millennial attitude when she gets a little overly nippy with another houseguest. This sends Eve and Adam on the road, hitting the mattresses back in Tangier (with its creepy back alleys), where they also are desperately hoping to replenish their dwindling supply of O-positive.
None of this would be nearly as interesting without the immortal Tilda Swinton. No one does thin and pale like she does. Eve's longing smirk across an airplane aisle when a fellow passenger cuts his hand and dribbles a little blood on his seat-back tray is pricless. It's the film in a nutshell -- wry, yearning and perpetually suave.
Jarmusch peppers these proceedings with great music, starting with the proto-garage-grunge-a-billy of Wanda Jackson's "Funnel of Love":
He then relaxes into the atmospherics of Jozef Van Wissem (Squrl), with whom Jarmusch has recorded three experimental albums. The soundtrack is worth the price of admission on its own. Van Wissem's spooky instrumentals (which stand in for Adam's) span centuries of styles. If you've got that and a blood-thirsty Swinton luxuriating in a juicy role, time flies.
BONUS TRACKS
The film climaxes with this haunting song performed by Yasmine Hamdan, called "Hal":
Van Wissem's "A Taste of Blood":
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