BYZANTIUM (2013)

Genre: Drama/Fantasy/Thriller
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Sam Riley, Jonny Lee Miller, Caleb Landry Jones
RunTime: 1 hr 58 mins
Rating: M18 (Violence And Sexual Scenes)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/ByzantiumMovie

Opening Day: 10 October 2013

Synopsis: Eleanor and Clara, two mysterious and penniless young women, flee the scene of a violent crime and arrive in a run-down coastal resort. They try to find money and refuge along the tawdry seafront and in the dilapidated hotels. Clara, ever-practical, sells her body. She soon encounters shy and lonely Noel, who provides a roof over their heads in his seedy guesthouse, Byzantium. Clara, always looking towards the future, turns it into a ‘pop-up’ brothel. Meanwhile Eleanor, the eternal schoolgirl, meets Frank, a kindred spirit who unwittingly prompts her to tell the truth about her life. She tells him that Clara is her mother; yet Clara is only a few years older. She says that she was born in 1804; yet she is just 16. She confesses that she must drink human blood to stay alive – and so must her mother. In the small, quiet town, people start to die. And the past that the girls have been running from for so long, finally catches up with them – with astonishing consequences.

Movie Review:

Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Breakfast on Pluto) and based on a teleplay by scriptwriter Moira Buffini, Byzantium is a dark fantasy faintly reminiscent of Jordan’s 1994 hit adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel, Interview With The Vampire.

The story follows two vampires who are struggling vagabonds: the irresistibly charismatic Clara (Gemma Arterton), aptly described as “morbidly sexy”, plies her trade on the street and is fiercely protective of her child, Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan). Dreamy and graceful, the ever-youthful Eleanor lives on the outskirts of life; eschewing the seedy underbelly her mother makes a living out of while pining for a more conventional life. Donning a red jacket with a cape for most of the film, Eleanor is a twisted version of Red Riding Hood, with an innocent enough appearance that masks the monstrous truth. Unlike her mother, she steadfastly holds onto the rule of only feeding on the elderly or the sick, those who are ready to have their death wishes fulfilled. She dutifully performs a similar rite for every killing. Like any family, their relationship is tumultuous: Eleanor is resentful of her mother’s way of living, even as the latter is doing the best she can.

Interspersing the present are flashbacks of a time during the Napoleonic Wars that layer the characters’ history and are essential to giving meat to the story. Clara’s backstory is cripplingly miserable: After being forced into prostitution by a certain Captain Ruthven (Jonny Lee Miller), she seizes the secret to eternal life through his comrade Darvell (Sam Riley) and eventually condemns both herself and her daughter to becoming vampires.

Driven by the fear of old enemies and the consequences of being found out for who they are and what they do, mother and daughter are constantly on the run, shifting from town to town. As Clara seduces and schemes her way to set up a makeshift brothel in an unused hotel called Byzantium to earn their keep, Eleanor befriends a leukemic teenager Frank (Caleb Landry Jones) after impressing him with her piano-playing. Giving in to the urge of wanting to make her 200-year old secret known, Eleanor takes a misstep that threatens both her and Clara’s tenuous livelihoods.

Gothic and visually elegant with occasional shocks of violence, the film may be excessively introspective at times, thanks in part to Ronan’s ice-blue stare and the lonely strains of piano constantly in the background. Jordan creates a cold atmosphere of relentless despair and hopelessness in possibly one of the less sanguine vampire films to emerge in recent years, similar to 2010’s understated Let Me In.

While Ronan’s sensitive portrayal of a conflicted teenager grappling with remorse and age-old wisdom is praiseworthy, it isn’t much of a breakthrough from her performances in recent films such as The Host or Hanna. The film’s highlights are credited to Arterton. Clara is a spitfire that lends Byzantium much-needed life, with her zealous motherly instinct forming most of the story’s heart.

Movie Rating:  

(Let down by a ‘Twilight’-style ending which ties up too neatly, ‘Byzantium’ won’t appeal to recent converts of vampire-lore, but fans of original vamp literature in the veins of Bram Stoker and Anne Rice may appreciate its gothic cinematography and quiet introspection)

Review by Wong Keng Hui