Byzantium Review

28th May 2013

Neil Jordon returns to horror (as he proved adept at in The Company of Wolves and Interview With the Vampire) only, despite taking a second bite at vampire lore, he is keeping this one very much in the real world.

Disco ball vampires are finally out this season. This is the slow brooding examination of prolonged, repetitive and lonely life in the shadows – all viewed from the beautiful cinematography that one has come to expect from Neil Jordan’s work.

Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan play a mother/daughter posing as sisters who work their way from location to location as life dictates. Clara (Arterton) works as a prostitute and feeds on the depraved whilst Eleanor (Ronan) prefers to act as an angel of death to the sick elderly. But they are constantly being pursued by shadowy figures as the past keeps threatening to catch up with them; and when Clara moves them once again further friction escalates between to two.

As a result Eleanor picks up a friendship with Frank (Celeb Landry-Jones) with whom she finds trust and truth; whilst Clara sets their home up in a disused hotel which she promptly turns into a brothel in order to make them money to survive.

As lush as the visuals can be in Byzantium, it’s the two leading performances that do most of the distracting. Both fuelled with an inner fire that each has to contain as they survive through life. Arterton’s Clara has the will of a survivor, happy to slide from place to place hiding the tracks without ever worry too much about consequences it may have on her relationship with her daughter. Doing the motherly deeds it seems is enough to warrant thanks. Saoirse’s Eleanor on the other hand may well be tired of the routine, yet she constantly runs through her own private routine again and again of writing her story down which she then disposes of ritualistically. It’s a nice touch, and one that ultimately will eventually lead her life towards change.

Modern releases of the vampire lore seem to have forgotten to write and play for the mature audiences, but with Byzantium, Jordan is not only back, but this is proof of the quality of character, writing and action needed to satisfy audiences wanting a little bit more than teenage romance. called upon.