Review of Byzantium (2013) by Jason A — 13 Mar 2013

What you think of Vampire movies in general, will, I suspect, dictate your reaction to 'Byzantium', but 'Let the right one in' isn't the same as 'Twilight' and this is Neil Jordan returning to the genre 19 years after his 'Interview with the Vampire'.

Like 'Let the right one in' (I've not seen the US re-make), Byzantium is clearly set in our time - apart from the 200-year-old flashbacks of course, but these are vampires after all. Eleanor and Clara Webb have had bad times; are having bad times. Female vampires in a male vampire world, they are beacons of vampire feminism. Male vampires want to kill them: male vampires are not nice. Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) is absolutely nice. Her mother, Clara (Gemma Arterton) isn't, but isn't in the sense that you couldn't really take her home to see mum, and not simply because she might kill her and suck her blood. In most other ways, she's very nice. She's a good and protective (and how!) mother and a lithesome exotic dancer for whom you could easily lose your head (best to make sure she hasn't got the cheese wire garrotte on her really). OK, and she turns a trick or two too in order to make ends meet (OK, boys, don't go there please, I mean REALLY, you don't need a suck job off Clara). This tart-with-a-heart (don't ask whose) turns over a new leaf when the opportunity arises to become the proprietress of Byzantium, a run-down hotel in a run-down seaside resort (sorry Hastings) which she turns into a house of negotiable affection to the benefit of passing men and working girls wanting a warmer place to practice their vocation.

Aaw! But sadly, trouble follows, partly because Eleanor being 16-going-on-200 falls in love with a local lad and tells him her story and partly because the Baddies are after our girls. And so it goes. Well I loved it. Partly because Ms Arterton is fairly easy on the eye (what's she done to her boob?) and partly because I've always been a committed feminist myself. This is not a great movie, but it's good modern Gothic and it's always enjoyable to see new blood injected into these themes.