Byzantium

If you follow this blog you'll probably know that I'm pretty much into Vampire films, so since I knew that Byzantium was in production I've been quite interested on grabbing my hands on it. I've done so this weekend, and well, the film is pretty good.

The plot is quite original. While it touches on common Vampire topics like loneliness, it does it from a slightly different approach, more that the loneliness and pain of seeing everyone you can love age and die, this is the loneliness coming up from being constantly on the run escaping from someone else. This time, our main vampires are 2 beautiful women, a teenager and her young mother (hum, off the top of my head I can't think of any film were female vampires are portrayed as cute ladies) that are not part of the typical semi-aristocratic elite, but they lead a difficult life struggling to make ends meet.

The initial story behind how they turned into vampires develops as the current story does, so it keeps you intrigued until the end. The process that turns you into a vampire is quite new, not being bitten by another one, but traveling to a remote island to die and rebirth (this is quite a spectacular moment, with a water fall suddenly running red as the new immortal blood runs through your veins). Also, our vampires do not bite other humans to get their nutritious blood, but pinch their neck with a sort of extensible nail, and they are not killed with a stake or being burnt by daylight, but decapitated. The setting for the story is quite appropriate, some coastal cloudy town somewhere in the British islands, so it helps in creating the ambience of sorrow where the teen vampire dwells in (by the way, her sad expression reminds me in a way of Sibel Kekilli in When We Leave).

All in all, a quite enjoyable film you should give a try to.