Dir. Thomas Alfredson, Sweden, 2008, 114 mins, Swedish with subtitles
Cast: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragna
Review by Richard Dilks
This is the answer to a question no one asked: what happens when you cross a vampire flick with an arthouse film? In this case, a lumpen, often startling, overly long, sometimes funny and rather moving film.
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 years, 8 months and 9 days old boy with a mop-curtain of white-blond hair. He is being bullied. When he starts fondling a knife, suspicions mount that the dulling, pristine snow of Blackeberg's 1982 winter will soon be splattered with blood. And indeed it is, but it isn't Oskar's blood. As a murderer is loosed on the town, a suburb of Stockholm, along comes an unhealthy-looking Eli (Lina Leandersson). She is 'more or less' 12. But the blood isn't hers either.
After some memorable scenes as this small working-class town grinds through a dun-coloured winter, including the trussing up of a bystander whilst his blood vessels are drained (all watched by a giant poodle), it becomes clear why plenty of blood, but not Oskar's or Eli's, is being sprayed. She is a vampire; and they trust one another. If that reads preposterously, that's sometimes how this film watches. Busy sitting on a fence of its own construction – between unexpected, sharp humour and empathy with the plight of being a vampire – it sometimes stretches credulity and patience too far.
But other moments are touching and some are wonderfully original, with an insightfully drawn picture of lonely childhood, a few genuine shocks and some dark laughs.
The budget clearly didn't stretch to lots of sophisticated trickery – Eli can fly, but we never see it – and the film is all the better for it. It achieves the unique feat of having you looking at a vampire's attacks with something approaching sympathy.
But it's too long and is authentically arthouse in taking itself far too seriously. That it was a book (by John Ajvide Lindqvist) comes as no surprise. You can feel the gaps where imagination-fuelled atmosphere would have let the reader breathe, but where the film constrains.
Still, if you've ever wondered what an emotionally sensitive vampire film is like – and even if you haven't – you should consider this.
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