You can see what attracted a filmmaker like Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, The Butcher Boy) to a genre like vampires, which, thanks to the success of films like the Twilight franchise, is enjoying plenty of reimagining these days. Jordan’s moody, ponderous, and sometimes plodding Byzantium uses the framework of the undying breed of blood sucking undead humans to probe Proustian notions of time and selfhood, meditating on a familial miasma mired in an uneasy sexuality that plays out over generations.
Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) and Clara (Gemma Arterton) are two vampires who are wandering around contemporary Ireland. Eleanor is forever 16, and Clara, her caretaker, is forever in a rapacious sexual prime. A murder sends the two fleeing Dublin and heading for a coastal town where they hang out and wander about, taking up refuge in an old empty hotel owned by the lumpy louse Robert Fowlds (Barry Cassin). Clara promptly turns the hotel into a brothel; she’s been running whorehouses for hundreds of years. The story follows Eleanor more closely, as she wanders through the town, her mind meandering through the present and the past. A chance encounter with a boy and an assignment for a writing class she literally wanders into prompts a more thorough going-over of her history as Clara ties to breach her loneliness and isolation by sharing her unbelievable story.
There’s much to admire about Byzantium, first and foremost its ambition, which tries to find something less sensational or melodramatic than the vampire story usual affords. Jordan sends us back into the tale of Eleanor’s mother, who was forced into prostitution, and for whom the prospect of vampirism – endless life at the cost of a soul – feels like both hope and retribution for a life stolen by the cruel forces of the world. There’s also a richness to the film’s visual tone, grey, cold, and damp. Blood is never bright red, just thick and molasses-like. Unfortunately, however, Byzantium never quite lives up to its ambition. There’s a jolty, unevenness in its story; the characters are thinner than they seem; and the meandering plot is often muddled with a plodding, heavy-handed exposition. Byzantium offers a lively concept, but with little blood flowing in its veins.
