Take this evening. Having watched Byzantium at a nearby World Of Cine, we paused for a bite to eat at an American-style diner that thinks it's always almost the weekend. In taking us to our table, the young lady took us on the "scenic" route before finally getting us to where we wanted to be.
This mirrored Byzantium almost perfectly - young person (16 going on 200) takes us the long way round before the film you've been waiting for finally turns up.
Spooky. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Byzantium looks, on paper, like it should be great. Mother-daughter vampire combo survive through the years by relying on the world's oldest profession (which raises a question - which came first, the vampire or the prostitute?) and an ability to do one at short notice.
It's directed by Neil Jordan, and he's good - he did The Crying Game. OK, he also did Interview With The Vampire, but we can put the blame there on Tom Cruise and move on. He also did The Company Of Wolves and Michael Collins. So that's a safe pair of hands if ever there was.
It stars Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, Hannah, the only reason to watch The Host) and Gemma "former Bond Girl" Arterton (who was stunning in The Disappearance Of Alice Creed, and managed to escape Hansel & Gretal - Witch Hunters with her reputation intact). Johnny Lee Miller puts in a good turn as the sleazy git who puts Arterton's Clara on her road to ruin and Tom Hollander is again delightfully understated. Then there's Daniel Mays (star of the recent Welcome To The Punch) as the poor Noel, who has an interesting approach to grieving but is a good bloke at heart.
So that's all good. Two important factors in place right there. And neither can be faulted. Arterton's performance is wonderful, while Ronin's is beautifully measured. In fact there's not a single bad performance here.
And it looks stunning. Some of the shots when Clara and Ronin's Eleanor are on the run take your breath away and the clear tonal shift between Clara's more colourful life and Eleanor's more drab, insular take on the world is both clearly marked and welcome. Equally the grit and grime of the small seaside town where the pair flee too having torched their London 'flat' is so visceral and tangible you can almost feel your hands dirtying as you watch.
So the pieces are all in place. We're good to go. All we need is a good script.
Which is where things start to fall down.
Starting out life as a play - A Vampire Story - author Moira Buffini has taken charge of screenplay duties here, which I suspect is part of the problem. Coming in at a whisker under two hours, Byzantium is not only a long film but it feels a lot longer. And so much stock is put in to Eleanor's teenage angst (which, to be fair, is understandable - she's been 16 for 200 years), as she attempts to tell the one story she's forbidden to tell (how she came to be) that by the time the real drama arrives it's a struggle to care.
And that's a real shame, because the final act is wonderful - gripping, fast-paced and violent as The Brotherhood (those in charge of the whole Thumb Brigade) arrive to clear up Clara's mess. In fact, the mother-daughter relationship aside for a mo, this is the real heart of the piece and is what the film should have been about - our two heroines on the run from a misogynistic bunch of blood suckers. This is where the real drama and tension lies, not in Eleanor constantly writing her life story just to throw it all away. Every day.
The mother-daughter relationship is, of itself, complicated and convoluted (you try being a young single mum for 200 years) without having any real depth. As a survival technique Clara ignores yesterday and focuses on tomorrow, which, while a handy coping mechanism, robs the audience of any chance to get to grips with two women who have been relying on each other for so long.
We get to know their full story, sure, but the emotional aspects are somewhat lacking - and there must be some real meat on those bones. This is very much Eleanor's story, but any resentment she may have towards the woman who made a massive decision for her is strangely lacking.
As a stage play, none of that probably matters. You've got 90 minutes to tell a story and the only medium you have is dialogue. Film has the advantage of using moving images and close-ups to explain back story, feelings, emotions and whatnot. Fail to utilise that and you get, well, this.
And that's the real shame of Byzantium. It always seems to be wanting to be deep, meaningful and worthy when, underneath, a brilliant sleazy vampire flick is waiting to burst out. And you could have both, it just needs re-writing and re-editing. That's all.
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