Okay, I'm cheating completely 'cause I've seen this movie and I knew it was good but hey, when you actually start watching cartoons for the umpteenth time to avoid movies, you need a good one to get yourself going again. And this is good, made from the same named book by Whitley Strieber. We've got Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon - guaranteed good stuff. Now this is a vampire movie, but a lot classier and more interesting a story than the usual prowl at night, bite necks and hide from the sun. Okay, I've got to repeat a joke that was told and I promise I won't mention sparkling for the rest of the review: 'Went to the Halloween stores this weekend looking for vampire costumes. Funny thing; all the sparkly outfits were in the fairy princess section... It's all so confusing...' Major thanks for a great joke and making me laugh 'til I about wet myself to Jason Backus for that one. There is absolutely NO sparkling here - and the actors have range and know how to act. Oh I almost forgot - toward the end of the movie there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Willem DaFoe who is billed as 'second phone booth youth'.
Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) is a beautiful vampire who promises her lovers eternal life and eternal youth. She means it about the life - it's the youth she kind of fudges on. See, while she's been alive for who-knows-how-long, her companions only last a couple hundred years (boo hoo) and then age rapidly until they are mere husks - but they are still alive. They're immortal after all.
Her current love is John (David Bowie, exuding sex and charm - of course this was two years before he did the music video Dancing In The Streets with Mick Jagger, which Family Guy calls 'the gayest music video ever made'), a talented cellist she married in 18th century France. The films opens in a night club in New York to a live performance from Bauhaus, a real English rock band. They live together in an elegant New York townhouse posing as a wealthy couple who teach classical music. 
Oh and no, they don't hide from the sun although they do sleep in the daytime so they can go out at night, and have a special retort in the basement to burn all the bodies they collect. And no fangs - in order to 'feed' they wear Ankhs of all things, with special tips that when the cover is removed, easily penetrates the arteries. It was funny to watch after they were done washing their hands and Ankhs in the sink, I don't know why, it seemed so... silly. So they are yuppie vampires but they also have a lot of class and style.
John however soon develops problems he was not told about. First he starts finding it hard to sleep (God do I know THAT one), then he sees signs that yes, he is getting older, even though by 'feeding' they are supposed to keep their youth. When he gives a 'what the hell' to Miriam she confesses that well, yeah, you're going to live forever - but you're not going to like it. As he ages more and more rapidly he seeks the help of a doctor named Sarah (Susan Sarandon) who's doing work on Progeria, the disease that rapidly ages and kills children. He hopes that her research has shown a way to slow down or reverse the process. She thinks he's nuts and keeps him waiting for two hours instead of the 15 minutes she promised - by that time he is now in the geriatric phase and she's shocked and insists he stays - nope.
Sarah shows up to find John but Miriam says he's gone away. There's attraction between the two and we have a somewhat protracted, but still not cheap or tawdry love scene between the two. Sarah is acting as if she's in a fog, barely aware when Miriam bites her arm, and she bites Miriam's arm, the two mingling their blood. Miriam then gives Sarah John's Ankh. Sarah's boyfriend Tom (Cliff De Young) can't understand what her problem is - she won't eat although she's starving and throws up anything she tries.
At her lab she finds there are two blood types in her system fighting each other. She pretty much knows now what the hell is going on. She goes back to Miriam to reject this 'gift' but it's too late - and Miriam gives her the 'eternal life, eternal youth' speech which we now know is a lie. Tom shows up and Sarah is supposed to kill him. She resists, but hunger makes her do it. Miriam thinks Sarah is hers now, but as they both sit at the piano getting cozy, Sarah drives the Ankh into her own neck to kill herself, forcing Miriam to ingest her blood - why? Maybe it was the 'warring blood types' stuff the lab was talking about, maybe she figured she wanted her blood to win... in any case, she collapses. Miriam, desolate, carries her upstairs preparing to put her in yet another coffin.
Now this is confusing but still pretty cool. As she's about to say goodbye to Sarah, the other coffins rumble around and open and all these mummies (still alive, but ick) surround Miriam to, I dunno, gross her out to death? Nah, what eventually happens is that Miriam falls off the balcony clear down all the floors to the bottom. Doesn't kill her of course, but for some reason the combination of this plus Sarah's blood makes her age rapidly, turning into a mummy herself. For some reason, this releases the others, and they all fall apart into dust. Why? I dunno - you'd have to read the book I guess.
Now this is where the movie was supposed to end, with Sarah and everyone else in the house being dead and boom, story done. But the moviemakers wanted to keep the ending open for a sequel (thankfully there wasn't one) so in their new ending Sarah survives and moves to London, using the proceeds from the sale of the building (And how did she get that exactly?) to buy another building in London. She is seen looking out at the city, two young people who are her, uh, family? Lovers? Future mummies? living with her. Meanwhile in a box in the basement, a trapped Miriam is heard faintly screaming (eternal life without youth is a real bitch).
Susan Sarandon later expressed regret that this sequence seemed to make no sense in the context of the rest of the film: "The thing that made the film interesting to me was this question of, 'Would you want to live forever if you were an addict?' But as the film progressed, the powers that be rewrote the ending and decided that I wouldn't die, so what was the point? All the rules that we'd spent the entire film delineating, that Miriam lived forever and was indestructible, and all the people that she transformed [eventually] died, and that I killed myself rather than be an addict [were ignored]. Suddenly I was kind of living, she was kind of half dying... Nobody knew what was going on, and I thought that was a shame."
And that strange ending was the only flaw in a pretty good flick and different take on the vampire genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment