REVIEW - BYZANTIUM

The worst parts of Byzantium are when it adheres too strictly to the mythology of vampirism. The scenario may discard many of the central features, but those which it maintains jut out, sharp reminders that this is a vampire film, actually, lest we forget. Otherwise, Neil Jordan's film treats vampirism as a characteristic of this mother and daughter drifting through present-day England, and takes a refreshing stance in displaying their existence as more concerned with the struggles of getting by as human beings than as vampires - that part just makes it more difficult. Jordan's films frequently centre around pariahs, cultivating a world of their own in lieu of conforming to a society that will only reject them. Clara and Eleanor are presented as such, and the world they are forced to cultivate for themselves is cruel and wearisome, and, for Eleanor, the temptations of human life breed in her a lust as strong as that for the blood of those humans. Byzantium is like a vignette from another film, dramatic but not serious, artful but not artsy, possessed of a fortune in imagination, only expanded to feature length, and it's a joy to indulge in Jordan's fortune. He commits himself wholly to the gothic extravagance of the fantastical story, told like the richest of fables via flashbacks, but, mercifully, knows where the line is between extravagance and excess. His is not an overly gory vision, but a humanistic one, embellished with some memorable, graphic imagery, sumptuously captured by DP Sean Bobbitt. And the increasing strain of feminism in the narrative is realised with detail and delivered with conviction. As Clara, Gemma Arterton is like a blaze of blood-red fire, a real bad-ass bitch. She turns up to a parent-teacher meeting in a lace bustier, leather pants and hooker heels. When she bathes in the cascade of a waterfall, the bloody streams spilling over her cleavage, it's an image of sinful glee, of glorious triumph. She opens up a brothel to earn some money, and deals with the competition, a local pimp, by killing him and sucking his blood. I choose to believe Gemma Arterton does that in real life.