Let The Right One In
Directed by Tomas Alfredson. Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on his novel. With K?re Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, and Karin Bergquist. (R)
Twilight
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Written by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer. With Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Nikki Reed, and Jackson Rathbone. (PG-13)
When two films that tackle similar subject matter arrive in theaters side by side, it's almost impossible not to compare the two, and filmgoers inevitably find themselves embracing one while its shadow is left at the altar. Capote or Infamous? The Prestige or The Illusionist? Deep Impact or Armageddon? (Sadly, sometimes there's no good answer.)
But while the history of competing films abounds with tales of stolen stories (see Antz v. A Bug's Life for the tale of a possible Disneyland backstabbing) this week's offerings stand out less for their similarities—both are tales of young love between a human and a vampire, and the difficulties that arise when your beau is undead—than the wildly different directions they take once they leave the starting gate.
First is Let The Right One In, a Swedish film written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who adapted his own novel for the screen (more on this later). It's the story of the 12-year-old Oskar, a withdrawn boy growing up in a dreary apartment complex in the Swedish suburb of Blackeberg. There don't seem to be many children nearby—Oskar spends most of his free time sitting on the courtyard's snow-covered jungle gym, working a Rubik's Cube—and the few that take notice of him at school consist of local bully Conny and his retinue of toadies.
Like many bullied children, Oskar has revenge fantasies and a fascination with violence—the latter shows up in a scrapbook he keeps filled with newspaper clippings about local murders; he acts on the former by taking his treasured knife to the courtyard to stab trees. "Squeal!" he cries—a sad, imagined victory for the boy his tormentors call "Piggy."
It's there that he meets Eli, a young girl who has just moved into the apartment next door with her father, the elderly Hakan. Only maybe he's not her father, this man whom we see draining murder victims' blood into a plastic jug. And maybe she's not exactly, as she says, "12… more or less." And maybe she's not a girl. But for Oskar, none of that matters; he's entranced by his strange new friend, and teaches her Morse code so they can tap out messages to each other on the wall between their apartments. She in turn counsels him on how to deal with his oppressors: "Hit back," she says. "Hard."
When the bumbling Hakan gets himself locked up, Eli is on her own, and soon sets upon the townsfolk for the blood she needs to survive. Here the film mixes in the fast-moving scares of horror; Eli is more feral cat than suave Dracula. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema makes great use of red in the sanguine-tinged scenes that follow her kills (and another that speaks directly to the film's title), where the bloody smear of Eli's mouth stands out in sharp contrast to Sweden's monochrome winter. It's almost warm, alive and inviting—almost. Here there's none of the romanticism of so many vampire films—at least none attached to their dietary habits. One of the film's most revelatory scenes, and one of its saddest, comes when Oskar surprises his new friend by cutting his palm and suggesting a blood bond.
Let The Right One In runs nearly two hours, but I found myself wishing it were a bit longer. There's a scene midway through the film that hints, briefly but shockingly, at Eli's history. It's a reference that readers of the novel will surely recognize, but almost nothing is done with it in the film, which will likely leave many viewers bewildered about its inclusion in the first place. What's surprising is that the novelist and the screenwriter who castrated the novelist's story are one and the same; it's difficult to imagine why Lindqvist was so circumspect here.
Still, it's a wonderfully thoughtful entry in a genre with a long history. Perhaps the greatest compliment is to note that its most magical parts aren't those where the blood flows, but where the heart beats.
Twilight, on the other hand, is the Tiger Beat of vampire movies, a glossy excuse to sell brooding teenage angst (very handsome angst, of course) to millions of young women—I suppose there may be millions of young men shelling out for tickets, but at the packed screening I attended, the Y chromosome was in exceedingly short supply. And that Tiger Beat dig isn't just a crack; the current headline on the teen magazine's website is "OMG—Happy Twilight Day!"
Based on the hugely successful book series by Stephenie Meyer, Twilight is the first in what is almost sure to be a series of films chronicling the lives of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart, human) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson, vampire). The pair meet cute when Bella moves to the small town of Forks in Washington State to live with her police chief father. They find themselves hopelessly attracted to each other, and battle both the forces of evil and their own hormones in a bid to stay together—maybe, if Bella gets her way, forever.
The Cullens—Edward is only one of a family of seven—are enlightened vampires; they think of themselves as "vegetarians" because they've forsaken human blood to hunt only wild animals. In an unusual twist (and one that makes little sense given how often the film refers to the intoxicating effect human blood has on vampires), family head Carlisle is a respected doctor in Forks, the man called in when townies start turning up dead in what appear to be animal attacks. Hint: they're not animal attacks.
One of the biggest problems with this film is a basic one: are we supposed to take it seriously, or is it camp? Director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) can't seem to make up her mind. When the Cullen teens are first introduced, it's in a slow-motion sequence in the high-school cafeteria, where their chiseled good looks and powder-white skin call to mind something between a de-blooded J. Crew ad and the zombie version of High School Musical. Yet for every slo-mo shot—and there are many—there's also a scene that seems to insist on its own seriousness, especially in the "I love you but we can't be together—because I'm a vampire!" story of Bella and Edward.
By the time they get to slow dance at the prom, the balance has long since tipped—and not, I think, intentionally—toward camp. It's difficult to say exactly where the slide began, but it may have been in Edward's pickup line: "You're like my own personal brand of heroin," he tells Bella. The peals of laughter that rang out in the theater afterward suggested we'd all overdosed.
Happy-Go-Lucky
Written and directed by Mike Leigh. With Sally Hawkins, Elliot Cowan, Alexis Zegerman, Sinead Matthews, and Eddie Marsan. (R)
One of the early scenes in Happy-Go-Lucky features its protagonist, a chipper, bike-riding London schoolteacher named Poppy, browsing in a bookstore and trying to engage its clerk in some small talk. A dour sort, he's not having it, and she ends up mostly talking to herself, laughing at a small string of her own jokes. By the time she leaves, he hasn't changed a bit, and we feel sorry for her. By the time the film ends, you might sympathize more with the bookseller.
As played by the remarkable Sally Hawkins, Poppy is a kind of middle-class British version of Amelie—determined to bring happiness into people's lives, but with far less of the artistry of her Gallic counterpart. Instead of slyly awakening people to life, Poppy is more likely to punch them in the arm and suggest a round of drinks and dancing. Always finding the best in a situation—she can laugh even when her bike is stolen and she's forced to finally learn to drive a car—her eternal optimism is exactly the sort of thing that leads people to find more bitter drinking buddies.
But an entire film of uplift is a boring thing, and what gives Happy-Go-Lucky most of its bite is its vitriolic driving instructor Scott, a sheltered bigot played by the character actor Eddie Marsan. He has one of those faces that you know you've seen but can't remember where, which makes his appearance here all the better; he could be anyone you know, spouting off about dangerous immigrants and true religion just when you thought you knew him. His is a fearless performance, full of spitting rage, and while his character is at once despicable and pathetic, it's also the one without which Poppy wouldn't move forward; it's his warped sense of reality that finally shakes her out of her rosy reverie, and into something more meaningful.
There are some slow points here and there (a half-baked subplot introduces both the possibility of child abuse and a potential boyfriend for Poppy), and Poppy's joking retorts aren't for everyone; walkouts aren't uncommon when the film screens, as people get tired of her knee-jerk comebacks. But for those willing to stick it out till the end—or at least past her tense pas de deux with a local homeless man—the rewards are well worth any discomfort.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
