The Facts:

Synopsis: A depressed musician reunites with his lover, though their romance – which has already endured several centuries – is disrupted by the arrival of uncontrollable younger sister

Stars: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Rated: R

Running Length: 123 minutes

TMMM Score: (6.5/10)

Review: I feel like at this point in my movie viewing (and reviewing) career I should be much more familiar than I am with writer/director Jim Jarmusch. Responsible for a respectable amount of moody movies in the 80’s and 90’s, looking over his roster of work I realize that Only Lovers Left Alive is the just the second Jarmusch film I’ve seen with 2005’s Broken Flowers being the other. I’m not sure if I’m going to run right out and snap up movies like Night on Earth, Stranger Than Paradise, or Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai but based on the somber vampire flick he’s delivered here, it’s clear I need to do my homework.

Though the romantic vampire genre may have (fingers crossed!) finally run its course, Jarmusch nicely sidesteps the baring of fangs and avoids awkward kink in favor of character driven work that produces a curiously entertaining, unconventional entry in the bloodsucking oeuvre. Instead of Twilight’s Edward and Bella pawing over each other in a hazy meadow, we have Adam (Tom Hiddleston, Thor, Thor 2: The Dark World) and Eve (Tilda Swinton, The Grand Budapest Hotel) spending the first part of the film continents apart until Eve travels from exotic Tangiers to dilapidated Detroit for a reunion with her eternal flame. Like the impressively designed but fairly dated The Hunger from 1983, Only Lovers Left Alive is less about finding love than it is about what happens to a couple that have lived through many lives together.

Of course, into every vampiric life a little rain must fall and before Adam and Eve can really get down to business another creature of the night appears: Eve’s troubled sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska, Stoker). This family reunion doesn’t bring the kind of over-the-top fireworks seen in August: Osage County but the danger is very real as Ava’s free-wheeling lifestyle threatens to upend any brief bliss Adam and Eve are seeking.

It’s a very languid film and Jarmusch doesn’t make any apologies for letting his characters wax poetic about the state of art/music/literature in today’s modern society. He even introduces a true-blue historical figure, Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), still alive today thanks to a bite to the neck centuries earlier. Everyone in Jarmusch’s film seems too cool for school but not in the way that could have been aggravating or eye-roll inducing. My original feeling was that the film should have been called Hipster Vampire Namedroppers, a silly but pretty accurate way to succinctly describe the players.

Somber yet at times deeply funny, Only Lovers Left Alive is a nice antidote to several years of sappy films and television series that have made vampires more romantic leads than life draining villains. I’m not sure Jarmusch’s take will please everyone but there’s something interesting going on here seasoned moviegoers may want to investigate. Just make sure to bone up on your beatnik poets and existential artists so you can nod in agreement when Jarmusch makes an obscure reference.