LEFF: "Only Lovers Left Alive", one thousand years of existencial crisis

I'm not a superstitious Victorian but, in these days, vampires are all around the place. From massive book and movie franchises, Twilight put them out there. It sucked the gloom out of the heirs of Count Dracula and Nosferatu, turning them into teenage sparkling fantasies, while shamelessly disregarding any consideration for the culturally and socially cemented vampire mythology. But the important thing is: they are being seriously revised. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, however stupid it may sound, plays with the historical figure of the American President; the incredible Swedish Let the Right One In tells a sinister love story between vampire children.

And how would Jim Jarmush do it? Well, by simply fang-biting a Jim Jarmush story and turning it.

Only Lovers Left Alive is a languid, ironic, existentialist, dark romance about two lovers who have been in love for centuries. Adam (Tom Hiddlestone), in black, is a suicidal romantic musician, cynical about the current times, still mourning over the death of his heroes (Galileu, Newton, great scientists mostly), depressing over technology and a decaying, valueless society, revolted about the way his musical career turned out (he never put anything out there, though he's the real composer of some of the greatest Schubert pieces, and the others). Eva (Tilda Swinton), in white, is a wise, restrained but grateful, tolerant, kind, dance-loving "person", still bewildered by book passages she's been reading for hundreds of years (when she travels, she literally takes the best books ever written, which obviously includes David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest). Two unforgettable performances (is it that everything Tilda touches turns into gold?) fairly sidekicked by John Hurt (I always bow down to this guy), Mia Wasikowska (feels so real that she was bit around the sixties and currently lives in L.A.) and Anton Yelchin.

The couple is melancholically cool ("That is so 15th century."). The places are metaphors for contemporary America and a convicted world. Seductive roamers, car night-drifters, they cross back and forth through the bankrupt, collapsed city of Detroit (where operas were once sang in beautiful theaters, where the greatest American cars were once made) and get stuck in Tanger, Morocco.

References and self-consciousness are just enough, shedding the film in an amusing, playful aura (Marlowe wrote everything Shakespeare took credit for, and still hates the "philistine" for it; Eve's sister draconian qualities turn out to be mere pesky teenage irresponsibility; humans are called "zombies"; it abandons the elegant stylistic virtues of the first five minutes to focus entirely on the characters).

This is mythological: they have fangs, they're bloodsuckers, they can turn people or suck them to death, they can't live during the day, they're immortal but can die if stabbed with a wooden spike or shot with a wooden bullet, and so on. But this is also the most human, naturalistic vampire story imaginable - say, they don't sleep in coffins because things can be much more comfortable and... normal. They struggle to stay hidden, because the media would destroy them. They struggle to stay fed because society would catch them (you can't throw bodies in the Thames like in the 1600's).

But, most of all, though they've been everywhere and witnessed everything, though they're the most cult and bright people in the world, they struggle to find a meaning of life. And just like in a Woody Allen film, only love keeps them alive.

"Moonrise Kingdom" is a rare bird

You might fall in love and still not be able to define a route for the streams of landscapes, colors and songs that blur your reality checker.

But when you're twelve and experience that soft rush of innocent love projected over an uncommitted faraway future, you know exactly what is happening and which should be your next steps. You may not know how to behave at school the next day when you sit beside your sweetheart, but since last evening you've been tripping on your own world, taking all the chances, running out all the possibilities, descending the most fantasist paths (and so austere are the elements of real life like Suzy's little brothers). Of course you do want to marry him or her. Such a genuine unawareness.

Suddenly, one year goes by and you've grown up. Adolescence climbs onto your shoulders, pimples pop up, sex becomes a major issue, you may face your first existential doubts and you're already halfway out of the egg.

Moonrise Kingdom is a beautiful vintage portrait of those fugitive times right before childhood has vanished across our maturing body.

The color palette - beiges, browns, greens, yellows, some blues - the unbridled travelings in perfectionist framing, the theatricality of the arrangements (characters always facing us, like the Scout's table) are the utmost exacerbation of Wes Anderson's visual aesthetics. Sometimes it feels more like an animation than Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). Sam and Suzy's journey is an adventuresque escapade in a nameless magic-realistic land surrounded by seawater and visited by seaguls. If the meet-cute is a bizarre dreamy conversation between a scout boy and a bunch of girls masked like flamboyant birds, the climax is a clinging of hands taking on from Rapunzel to The Lion King, as the stormy dark night threatens to kill all the lovable souls of the movie.

When the two kids dive in the canal or when we see the binoculars' POV, it has got a fainting orange hue, just like an old summer photo. This is a fairytale, stories inside stories (all the bookishness, the vinyls, the theater, the flashback), a deliberately created unique place. A motion capture of the imaginarium of a child in love. That's why this is an isolated reminiscent but anachronistic place inhabited only by these people, whose dwellings are narrated like a BBC wild life documentary – the ultimate naturalness. It is obvious why it never cares to be a traditional coming-of-age: doesn't tackle sex (although there's that funny moment at the beach), drugs, school or even the familiar issues Anderson's adults end up dealing with (right here and in his previous films). Wes says this is what his twelve-year-old self imagined when in love. I did too. Our own egocentric bravery, the implacable antagonist that may or may not become our best friend in high school and the extraordinary solutions we can come up with among ordinariness (the tree house, the scissor, the thunder).

Although deadpan, these are characters with depth. Anything can happen in Moonrise island, and because Sam and Suzy are going to be in love forever (so they believe), they can marry each other. Hence the naivety I meant at first. That's what the beetle fishhook earrings stand for ("How are we going to take these?"). What grounds us to reality is the wisp of blood descending her neck, the melancholia of the adults and their fate as sad institutional enforcers - police officers, scout chiefs, lawyers, social security agents (strike of narrative genius by Anderson and Coppola). But in this imaginary world the children can escape all the way through (no authority, not even chief Harvey Keitel, will be able to refrain them). What's dark about it is that this is their last chance - like I said, one year from now they'll be giving their first steps into adulthood and starting to be sorry "for all that still hurts" (says Frances McDormand to Bill Murray) - we see the seeds of that suffering, as when Suzy takes a bath. Only Bruce Willis' character overcomes the mechanicness of his function and recreates the parental bond Wes Anderson is so fond of (well, Norton is surprisingly heroic at the end).

A first love as dumb as absolute and sincere: "What kind of bird are you?".

Io Sono L'Amore / Eu Sou o Amor (2010)

Requintado e sensual na fotografia, na direcção artística, no guarda-roupa, nos passos e gestos da extraordinária Tilda. O ritmo lento de todo o filme passa muito bem no primeiro acto, em que ficamos a conhecer a vida da burguesa família italiana Recchia, que nos estabelece as premissas da integridade, da compostura e do tradicionalismo, prontas a serem quebradas. As cores quentes do interior frente às cores frias o exterior marcam a pertença e o que está para além dela. O problema é que o crescendo de tensão que se adivinha chega tarde, desenvolve-se esporadicamente e termina mal.


Por um lado, Guadagnino coordena a câmara de forma belíssima, criando travellings e zooms intensos, conjugados com uma montagem aflitiva e espreitadora (a perseguição; o esconderijo), captando com destreza ora as deslocações e a mera existência corporal da mulher, ora os seus olhos e os seus lábios sedentos de paixão. Por outro, a maior parte do tempo é dedicada à exploração insuficiente de relações e acontecimentos que quebram o ritmo do pecado crescente que ameaça (e muito bem) surgir, não tanto a nível visual (mas também), mas sim a nível de argumento.


Esta deveria ter sido uma história da queda de uma família em virtude de uma rendição aos sentimentos. E logo aqui, surge um problema. Falamos da rendição da mãe ou também de um filho e de uma filha ? As tais relações deficientemente exploradas - ou o seriam ou não lhes tocaríamos. É a história de uma mulher sensual, imersa em volúpia reprimida, que tem um mero affair, visualmente arrojado mas narrativamente banal. Banal porque está desestruturado, porque não se encaixa devidamente na sua entrada e muito pior na saída. A coincidência, o azar que leva à morte de Edo é um clichê mais que visto e que enganou quem o escreveu, se pensou que queria dizer que "as acções têm consequências" e, citando o poster do filme, que "nunca mais nada será igual".