The setting of "Only Lovers Left Alive" is natural for
director Jim Jarmusch, with his predilection for characters drawn to the
nighttime and the underground. Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton)
are married vampires who, naturally, only come out at night. They're also a
world-weary couple who seek to maintain interest in life after thousands of
years. It's especially a struggle for Adam, a depressed musician tired of the
ways of the "zombies," the regular humans, who are despoiling the
planet and don't appreciate the arts of the past. The more resilient Eve lives
in Tangier, procures her blood from Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe
and is able to speed read literature from all ages and languages. She agrees to
join Adam in his crowded, creepy mansion in a desolate section of Detroit.
Driving around at night, they visit a former grand movie house that is now a
parking lot, a symbol of the cultural malaise Adam sees all around him. In
contrast, Adam's home, in which he composes jarring rock instrumentals, is
filled with photos of Franz Kafka, Buster Keaton, Mark Twain, Robert Johnson
and others who, while not necessarily vampires, share the couple's artistic
predilections.
Adam purchases his blood in canisters supplied by a corrupt hospital
researcher, but Eve's mischievous vampire sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska), on a visit,
forces the couple to relocate to Tangier after she gets her blood the old
fashioned way, by biting into the necks of victims. Abroad, they must grapple
with the loss of their blood supply after Marlowe finally dies and the blood
has been contaminated, another sign of the wreckage of the planet's resources
by the "zombies."
Jarmusch's "undead" characters, in their refined sensibility and
malaise, certainly are elitists with a Manichean view of the world. "Only
Lovers Left Alive," however, provides a wholly original updating of the
vampire mythology by a director known for his startling takes on various film
genres.
"My Old Lady" was originally a play by Israel
Horovitz, who directed this film adaptation. The main character, Mathias
Gold (Kevin Kline), is 57 years old, thrice divorced and an acerbic, recovering
alcoholic who left New York for Paris to claim his inheritance of an apartment
building from his father. Once there, he discovers Mathilde Girard (Maggie
Smith), a feisty 90-year-old, and he also encounters the vagaries of French
real estate law. Apparently one can't sell an apartment while the previous
tenant is alive; further, one must make payments to her. Mathilde lets him take
a room while he considers his future, including what to ultimately do with his
possession. Her dour daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas) also lives there,
and she is not pleased by the new occupant. While this set-up seems to have the
makings of a comedy (especially as somewhat misleadingly presented in the
trailer above), the film takes quite a serious turn. Mathias and Chloe find
they have something in common: Mathilde and Mathias's father had an affair in
Paris. This long-term affair had damaging effects on both, yet these
repercussions could also draw them together. "My Old Lady" is clearly
a play adapted for a film, with long dialogues that uncover the characters'
familial torments. While its transition into a film is not completely smooth,
it is redeemed by powerful, revelatory acting on the part of the three main
characters, especially that of Kevin Kline.
"Love Is Strange" begins with the marriage of Ben
(John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) two Manhattan seniors. Following this
joyful ceremony, George is fired from his job teaching music at a Catholic
school because, though it's been known for years that he's been living with
Ben, his same-sex marriage is viewed as a violation of his contract. The couple
is then faced with the realities of New York City real estate. Ben, a painter,
is retired and George's loss of income means that they can no longer afford the
mortgage on their apartment. In their search for affordable housing, they put
themselves on lists with endless applicants. Their friends, all of whom are
willing to help, don't have the space to accommodate them both. George is
afforded a couch in the downstairs apartment of two gay, younger policemen, who
treat him kindly but throw noisy parties where he feels out of place. Ben moves
in with his nephew, Elliot (Darren Burrows), his wife, Kate (Marisa Tomei) and
their teen-age son, Joey (Charlie Tahan). Joey increasingly resents Ben's
presence in the lower part of the bunk bed in his room and Kate, a novelist, is
exasperated with his need for conversation while she's trying to write. Despite
their dislocations, Ben and George's essential connection is not severed, and
Ben's impact on the moody Joey goes deeper than the latter realized in this
poignant, moving and believable film
In "Le Week-End," a poignant, honest film directed by
Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi, Nick (Jim Broadbent) and Meg
(Lindsay Duncan), both teachers from England, are celebrating their 30th
anniversary in Paris. Their banter gradually reveals both their affection and
disappointment in each other and their regrets. Nick ruefully looks back while
Meg expresses her frustration and rebellious spark through choosing a hotel and
a meal at a restaurant they can't afford. After slipping out from the
restaurant, they run into Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), a former student of Nick’s at
Cambridge. Morgan has written a best-seller, has a new, young French wife and,
unlike Morgan, has a glib manner that covers up his self doubts. Ironically, it
is when the couple hit bottom that they rediscover their capacity for love and
spontaneity.
"Kill Your Darlings," the directorial debut of John
Krokidas, is both a coming-of-age story of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) as
he developed into a poet at Columbia University and a true tale of a murder on
the part of one of his peers. At Columbia, Ginsberg meets Jack Kerouac (Jack
Huston) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster); the trio would eventually achieve
renown as Beat literary figures. Ginsberg also meets Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan),
troubled and charismatic, who becomes a muse–but not a fellow writer–as he
urges his friends to overturn convention in their writing and their lives. Carr
has been stalked for years by Dave Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), an older
teacher. As tension between the two reached a climax, Carr stabbed Kammerer to
death in Riverside Park, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, in 1944–an event that
has legal ramifications for Kerouac and moral ones for Ginsberg. Carr, the
muse, literally gave this group of artistic rebels an outlaw aura as depicted
in this compelling film.
Written in memory of Hal Goldman (1954-2010), Beat scholar, blues brother.
"Strange now to think of you, gone...
While I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village." - Allen
Ginsberg, "Kaddish
