User Reviews

The movie is slow, ambiental, and the moral of it is missed by other comments, at least so far, so this is my take on it, before someone else does it better - my first review. I must agree with some of the other comments about the unmotivated name-dropping throughout the movie (listing historical figures main characters interacted with, inspired, or have been inspired by). That could have been done more casual, since Jim Jamrusch audience doesn't need to be baby fed. I didn't have a problem with the fact that the movie develops slowly, perhaps it suited me fine on a rainy Sunday evening I went to see it. Anyhow the cast for this is great, I expected nothing less from Tilda in this role, however Tom Hiddlestom, whom I see for the first time was also great, but I could not decide if the fact he reminds me to Adrien Brody in this role is good or not. Picking Detroit for the shooting site of better part of the film is also a great idea. As for the chemistry between the two lovers, I didn't really buy into it, even though it wasn't completely unconvincing, maybe that's just me, or maybe that wasn't the main idea despite the title. And finally the end of the movie brings a change in pace, where we see that once they run out of blood supply all the morality, tranquility, and intellect are stripped off the main characters (much like the human behavior they criticize more than once), and they become what they are hungry vampires (humans).

This is a beautiful and artistic movie on many counts: mesmerising soundtrack, atmospheric sets and settings, dreamy camera-work and scene-play, methodically under-stated acting, and slow but sure character development. We get to know the four vampires, especially Adam (played brilliantly by Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (played by the versatile Tilda Swinton), from a series of contrasts and paradoxes as their motives, moods and lives change. They seem both ancient and modern,languorous yet focused, familiar but alien.

As the slim story-line and minimal back-story unfold, the movie focuses on triggering our empathy for creatures who have survived for several centuries, facing many challenges, the most constant of which is the threat of boredom and existential alienation. Apart from blood - as food and drug - their main motives for survival are human knowledge and culture: art, science, literature, music. Living on 'back-door' blood samples from hospitals, these 21st century vampires now avoid feeding on humans because of the growing chances of detection by modern police agencies.

Things had been going fairly smoothly for Adam, a retired rock star hiding away in an old house in Detroit, until his old 'lover' Eve returns from Tangiers, soon followed by her troublesome 'sister' Ava from LA. Ava brings heat to the door, and Adam's quiet life changes. But, as noted, the story is not the main thrust of this movie, nor is vampire mythology (it's not a standard horror flick). My feeling was that the director (Jim Jarmusch) wanted to take a fresh approach to the old narrative theme of empathizing with the experience of being immortal, as well as exploring the metaphor of living with a serious drug habit. He does well on both counts. A classy, moody movie, which you should definitely watch before making any decisions about becoming a vampire.

OLLA (don't you just love that!) opens with a close-up of a spinning vinyl record to the background of period music, followed by crane shots of two separate scenes each with a protagonist lying in languid comfort, also spinning round and round. These two locations are then revealed as Tangier and Detroit. Tracing the nocturnal outdoor activities, the camera for the former meanders along exotic streets and alleyways and finally follows Eve (Tilda Swinton) into a small café where she hangs out with Christopher Marlow (John Hurt), now 450 years old (if my Googling is accurate), and eventually receives from him a grocery bag with some containers in it. In the latter city, half-way around the globe, we see Adam (Tom Hiddleston) disguised as a "Dr. Faust" (complete with surgical cap and mask so that only his eyes are showing) conducting a transaction of receiving from a Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright, criminally underused) drink-size cylinders which were immediately put into a super-secured looking bag. The conclusion of this series of scenes comprises alternating montages of Adam, Eve and Marlow, all comfortably in the security of their homes, sipping from elegant glasses the way a connoisseur would enjoy a vintage wine. Then, each tilts back, allowing the camera to focus on their gradually protruding canine teeth. Mission accomplished for these exceedingly stylish establishing scenes: these three are vampires, high-class vampires that don't condescend to biting any Tom, Dick or Harry, but instead purchase pure, uncontaminated, quality blood from reliable sources.

By this time, it becomes quite evident that OLLA is very much an exercise in style, reflected in the first half of my summary line. The second half is a theme that you would find readily in works of George Bernard Shaw or J.R.R. Tolkien. While you may argue that vampires are not totally immortal (indeed, Adam had contemplated killing himself with a special made-to-order wooden bullet) you can sense the wearing boredom, even when they still deeply love each other, as the title of the movie suggests. The initial scene in fact has a measure of hilarity showing how the two lovers communicate between Detroit and Tangier using state-of-the-art video equipment of i-phone and TV hooked up to video camera. If the dialogue has reviewed how long it was since they were physically together, I missed it. Anyway, Eve with some difficulty overcomes her inertia and flies to Detroit (departure and arrival carefully scheduled to be at night time). They each have things to occupy themselves when they are apart, things artistic and cultural. Adam composes modern music while Eve reads in just about every known language, not to mention hobnob with Marlow. When they are together, other than sex (which is only implied and never explicitly shown), they talk about things artistic and cultural, over the last four or five hundred years. Yet, the sense of boredom is palpable. There isn't very much by way of story but there is a trajectory towards a sort of crisis: source the elite, pure blood that sustains them is running out.

The cast is top-notch. Those who have seen the vast variety of roles Swinton has played will understand that she is a whole acting universe all by herself. Launching through Loki, Hiddleston has become an icon that is synonymous with "cool". Hurt is another perfect choice. Two younger actors complement well this exceptional cast. Anton Yelchin (Chekov in the successful reboot of "Star Treks", with the funny Russian accent, if you need a reminder) plays Ian the gofer who supplies Adam with everything from vintage electric guitars to the aforementioned wooden bullet. Mia Wasikowska ("Alice in Wonderland" followed by a streak of character movies) is Ava, Eva's younger sister that one critic describes as "wild" but actually more normal as a vampire, one that does not make an agonizing effort to shun a human neck (guess whose it is in this movie?) Auteur Jim Jarmusch is not exactly prolific in terms of main stream (albeit still artsy) movies and the only movie I've seen of him is "Broken flowers" (2005) which won Cannes Grand Prize of the Jury (sort of silver medal) but that one well defines him and his work. By the way, it has Swinton too although you'll be hard pressed to recognize her.

I'm not a big fan of most vampire flicks since the subject has not only been done to death (no pun intended) but also because the idea of a human vampire is strictly a fictional construct and hence not a character that one can take very seriously at all. Director Jim Jarmusch has decided to debunk the genre by updating and treating it somewhat as a black comedy. His protagonist is "Adam," a depressed vampire hipster, who enjoys listening to his own dirge-like rock compositions and is proud of his collection of vintage guitars, supplied by his human gofer, Ian, who is part of the local rock scene. Adam asks Ian to obtain a wooden bullet, which he may or may not use to eventually kill himself.

Soon enough, his wife Eve (they've been married for centuries), has just left 400 year old playwright Christopher Marlowe (also a vampire) in Tangier and comes to Detroit hoping that she can cheer Adam up. Over half the film features little conflict between Adam and Eve and aside from engaging in some rather dull conversation, they occasionally leave Adam's home and drive around in a mostly deserted and abandoned Detroit.

Finally something happens past the midpoint; Eve's sister, Ava, pays a visit to the couple from Los Angeles. She ends up killing Ian by biting his neck and drinking his blood. Adam and Eve are appalled by her behavior (since modern vampires don't do that sort of thing) and kick her out of the house. They then dispose of Ian's body and head to Tangier after a bunch of Adam's fans appear outside the house.

When they discover that Marlowe is dying from contaminated blood, they realize they have no choice but to whip their fangs out and kill an unsuspecting couple they meet on the streets. That's basically it— virtually no plot, with a narrative that proceeds at a snail's pace. Score some points for atmosphere, but Jarmusch's tale is as bankrupt as Adam's blood supply. In short, proceed at your own peril!

Centuries old vampires exist in the modern world. And that's it, that's the plot. The fascinating Tilda Swinton (Eve) looks exotic in a number of baroque outfits, Tim Hiddleston (Adam) plays a typically soft spoken goth, and John Hurt is the supplier who brings them superior blood – 'the good stuff' – for a special treat. The acting is terrific and very natural, convincingly portraying what life would be like if they really did live forever.

The look of the film is rich and lavish. Writer and director Jim Jarmusch is clearly in love with the concept. Very much like the earlier, rather more succinct, 'Kiss of the Damned (2013)', the sedate pacing and uneventful lifestyle is interrupted by the arrival of the heroine's unruly and precocious younger sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska).

After watching Adam and Eve doing things really slowly, it is to be hoped that Ava's inclusion would be something of a shot in the arm. Not to dispel their night-time sanctuary, but just to provide … something. After all, about the most eventful occurrence up until this point is when the electricity cuts during another airing of their surprisingly non-goth music. For her duration, Ava's presence does exactly as it should – shakes the two old vampires up and disrupts the complacency that has marred the film up to this point.

My favourite character is probably Ian, the wheeler-dealer type. He's a shadowy, shady 'zombie' (Adam's contemptuous name for humans) and is enthralled by the rock and roll lifestyle these real 'life' goths adhere to. It is his demise at the hands of Ava that propels the couple, first to rid themselves of her (and therefore the interest she brings) and then to travel to Tangiers, where Eve was residing during the film's opening.

There's no doubt for me that Ava's appearance makes things more interesting, but also has the effect of making me appreciate more the earlier, tranquil non-eventfulness of the story, and Adam and Eve's understandable need for a return to that anonymity. Their story has quietly become compelling.

I rarely quote other reviews, preferring my opinions to emerge uninfluenced, but my favourite critique of 'Only Lovers Left Alive' is from Jessica Kiang of 'IndieWire', who gave the film a B+ grade, saying, "the real pleasure of the film is in its languid droll cool and its romantic portrayal of the central couple, who are now our number one role models in the inevitable event of us turning vampiric."

I was lucky enough to see this last year at the BFI screening in London, and last night was able to see it again with an intro by the director himself.

I'm not a fan of art house, pretentious movies. I find them dull and pointless, and I feel that this film has been presented by some media as a film of this type. That couldn't be more wrong. This film is a celebration of life, beauty, love, humanity and so many other things.

It is also hilarious! The dark posters and promo materials make this look like it will be a dull bore fest, but it truly is utterly wonderful in its humour, it's sweetness and light along with darker moments.

Tilda Swinton is the vamp we all want in our lives; humble, curious and so very optimistic, she is a joy.

My beloved Mr. Hiddleston is wonderful on so many levels. His Adam is both bleak and funny, his love for Eve redeeming him from being an 'angsty teen' character.

Go watch this beautiful movie. Enjoy the soundtrack (which is AMAZING!), the humour, the joy and curiosity, the excitement of just being alive.

Go watch it! Go now!

"We no longer exist as playwrights or actors but as passive spectators of an empty scene." — Baudrillard

Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive" opens with shots of rotating vinyl records. We're then introduced to group of dejected vampires, all of whom are hiding from a contemporary world deemed to be uncultured, corrupt, primitive and base. Unsurprisingly, these vampires refer to the humans who populate this world as "zombies"; brainless consumers who lack taste, self-reflexivity, any capacity for discernment, and who seem to exist only to gorge on whatever is put before them. The vampires, meanwhile, feast on high art, fine literature and the finest of finery. They have style.

Jarmusch's chief vampires are Adam and Eve, played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. Perhaps like Jarmusch himself, they're a pair of hipsters, emblematic of an artistic underground which turns its nose up to cities and civilisations which once held promise but now wallow in "bad taste". When Adam and Eve are not salivating over vintage guitars and fine records, they're suckling on flavoursome human blood. But this blood is becoming contaminated, a contamination which Jarmusch aligns to everything from grubby record producers, to pollution, to the dead-ends and deadlocks of Western capitalism. Ironic for a vampire, Adam thinks everyone and everything else sucks.

And so Adam and Eve spend most of Jarmusch's film moaning about the state of the arts, the death of creativity and reminiscing about the many fine philosophers, artists and personalities (though they admit Lord Byron was a "pretentious old bore") they met over the course of their lengthy lives. Meanwhile, new stuff is dismissed. "We've seen all this before," Eve grumbles, encapsulating the film's big joke: vampires as the ultimate world-weary hipsters, old-school connoisseurs whose immortality has granted them the ability to have literally "already seen everything long before you did". Significantly, Adam avoids modern technology, but Eve and her sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) are hooked on Youtube, web-cams and internet downloads, technology which rubs up against the vampires' retrogressive, archival, hipster attitudes. Ava in particular is hooked on the new. Part of the blip-time generation, and not possessing the restraint and patience of her elders, she's essentially suckered by the pull of contemporary junk food. She dies feasting on tainted human blood.

Adam lives in Detroit, recently rendered a wasteland by a global capitalism which turns history into an endless present and which bulldozes all values (and the generational clashes which oft fuelled art) in favour for production and profit. Like Jarmuschs's opening shot of spinning records, what the zombies consume is never "new", just the same old recycled tropes and trends. As the spinning record implies, Jarmusch's film is obsessed with the immobility, stagnation and repetition which exists behind illusions of motion. Things go round and around, but only the same destinations are repeatedly revisited. To the vampires, romantic, amorous and in search of "authenticity", this existence is unbearable. Ironically for a film about the allure of "new art", Jarmusch notoriously plagiarised the script to "Dead Man" from Rudy Wurlitzer and was also sued for plagiarising "Broken Flowers".

Early in "Only Lovers Left Alive", Adam listens to "Funnel of Love", a song about being sucked into a spinning, romantic abyss. Adam clings to the past, hiding from the sterility of a white/Anglo/ubiquitous culture which closes in on him like daylight suffocates and kills the vampire. Like the bored depressives of Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers" and "Stranger Than Paradise", Adam resists by barricading himself in private fortresses. But isolation takes its toll; Adam contemplates suicide. He wants out. He wants death! Eva encourages Adam to visit underground clubs and basement rock bands, Gothic places in the middle-of-nowhere where "genuine" art searches for notice like struggling weeds.

Like George Romero's early films, "Only Lovers Left Alive" pits the last humans (the lovers, the vampires) against homo-economicus. Unlike Romero, Jarmusch ends on a note of optimism. The West may be dead, but hope exists in the East, in Morocco, Tangiers, where the Third World's efforts at emancipation produce cocktails, arts, movements and moments which temporarily pique Adam's interests. And so like a spooky good-taste machine, or Hollywood talent scout, Adam navigates the shadows of Tangiers, until one song in particular (Hal, by Yasmine Hamdan, a song about the intertwining nature of love, nostalgia and loss) kisses his ears. He moves towards it, like a moth to a flame, and then feasts, devouring it whole. Ironically, it's this drive for consumption which fuels Adam's disenchantment; the vampires, in continually experiencing and so killing the new, propel their own suffering. Everything is eventually co-opted.

"Only Lovers Left Alive" features fine performances by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. They're stylish, well-coiffed and move about like fashion mannequins. Elsewhere Jarmusch tries for a very specific atmosphere – ethereal, hallucinogenic, lush - but he's not enough of a Sensualist to pull things off. Though his film has been praised for its "mood", this is all second-rate "atmosphere". The film is sharp, stiff, mannered and well composed, where it should perhaps be loose and fleeting, like the shadowy bars and dripping spaces of a Lynch, Wenders, Mann or even someone like late-career Neil Jordan or Michael Curtiz. Resolutely postmodern (and shot like a comic-book or Coen Brothers flick), "Lovers'" form is exactly what its vampires denounce.

8/10 - See "A Prairie Home Companion".

Jim Jarmusch is no longer as prolific as he's been in the past with "Only Lovers Left Alive" being his first movie since 2009. Here he wrote and directed the vampire story of Adam and Eve (gotta admit I cringed a bit with these names) played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. Supporting performances include Mia Wasikowska and John Hurt. The former brings some sex appeal and comic relief as a troubled teenager vampire and Hurt plays a father figure and mentor to Swinton's character. A smaller part is played by Anton Yelchin whose character's death just like the one of Hurt's character add a sad note to the movie as both were crucial figures in the lives of the two protagonists and may have contributed to their overall misery and final decision and shot of the film.

The age difference between Hiddleston and Swinton is not really a problem and decent makeup work and Swinton's mysterious aura that's perfect for the role of a vampire create two credible characters and an interesting love story. Also it adds a touch of mystery as Swinton's character's age is probably even harder to guess than her real number of annual rings. Another thing I liked a lot was the overall tone of the film, in particular the idea of vampires dying from contaminated blood bottles. Apart from that, we get the usual stuff, like sunrise being the time to go to bed after drunk party nights. Another thing I noticed is how the film actually feels like a good basis for a possible prequel. It could center for example on what happened with Wasikowska's character in Paris 80 years ago. With vampires not aging, they could even look exactly the same like in this movie.

One part that I did not like as much and that could have been left out for all I care was the central character's career as a musician and how his music was played everywhere. However, that is just a minor criticism. One of my favorite scenes was the one with the wooden bullet, which brought the whole suicide theme into the film, an air of desperation which is really much more about possibly leaving the other completely on their own in this world of strangers.

All in all, it's a solid movie, not really a must-see (except for vampire movie fanatics) and there's a bit of a revolutionary element missing which only very few films have. Personally I would rather recommend a watch of Twilight (simply because of its massive influence in pop culture) or the Swedish little gem "Let the Right One In".