Byzantium

Vampires may be immortals whose lives span across centuries but ever since Twilight they have been recast as teenagers, the better to reflect the target audience for Stephenie Meyer’s sparkly suckfest. There have been films that kicked back against this toothless treatment including Jim Mickle’s excellent Stake Land which had feral vampires that were far more animal than human. Neil Jordan’s Byzantium takes a very different approach to Stake Land and despite being centred around a vampire dealing with the emotional turmoil of being a teenager, it is a far cry from Twilight.

Gemma Arterton as Clara

The film concerns two women, Clara (Gemma Arterton) and her daughter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan). They move from town to town, living on the edges of society. Clara works in the sex industry – sometimes a lap dancer, a prostitute or a madam – always working for cash and leaving no paper trail in her wake. Eleanor struggles with the isolation of their nomadic existence and longs to tell someone their secret – they are hundreds of years old and survive by drinking blood.

When they arrive in the decaying seaside town of Hastings, Clara meets Noel (Daniel Mays), a lonely punter who has inherited a rundown guest house called Byzantium from his late mother. Clara sees the chance to turn the former hotel into a brothel, while Eleanor befriends Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), a local boy who is quickly smitten by her. But Clara’s rules forbid telling their secret or getting emotionally attached to anyone.

Little Red Riding Hood?

Moira Buffini wrote Byzantium based on her own stage play and her script puts a distinctive spin on the vampire myth. Buffini based her vampires on Irish legends, which gives the whole film a very distinctive feel from more mainstream genre outings plus some stunning locations of wild, raw natural beauty. These women do not possess super-powers. They can’t fly, they are no stronger than anyone else, they can’t transform into bats and they are not allergic to sunlight. The story casts Clara and Eleanor as powerless vampires in the widest social sense. Clara is a prostitute and Eleanor is a teenage schoolgirl. They may be un-aging, but they are simultaneously vulnerable to the predations of anyone stronger and more powerful than they are – which in this instance means men, both human and otherwise.

The male cast members include Jonny Lee Miller as Ruthven, the absolute cad responsible for Clara’s fall from grace, plus Sam Riley and Uri Gavriel as two men looking for Clara with unfriendly intentions. Miller makes a splendid scoundrel. As the lovestruck Frank, Caleb Landry Jones has the awkward gangly manner of a teenager still growing into their own body. None of the male characters are as fully developed or as compelling as Clara and Eleanor, but then this is their story not that of the men.

We are so totally judging you.

Byzantium uses the vampire genre to explore how women survive in the face of a hostile patriarchy. Clara’s involvement in the sex trade is one of the most obvious examples, while the organisation pursuing her is The Brotherhood, just to drive the point home.  Fortunately the script doesn’t labour over this theme so heavily as to become a lecture on feminist studies, but you don’t have to dig very hard to find the ideas at work.

Prior to Byzantium, I had only ever seen Gemma Arterton in Quantum Of Solace, in which she was essentially very glamorous window dressing, and in Tamara Drewe, which was far too fluffy for me. I thought she was exceptionally good here. The role demands a lot from her, but she delivers in every scene. Clara is passionate, stubborn and determined to survive using whatever limited means she has at her disposal. Every time they have to move, Clara tells Eleanor to let the past go and just leave it all behind, yet Clara is a woman defined by her past. It colours all her relationships and is constantly breathing down her neck, reminding her of how perilous her life is.

You, sir, are a cad, a bounder and a ne’er do well. Pistols at ten paces!

“I am sixteen forever,” says Eleanor, who has been stuck living with her mother for centuries. No wonder she’s going through a rebellious phase. Saoirse Ronan (how on earth do you pronounce her name?) is occasionally lumbered with overly portentous dialogue but she is intensely sympathetic as the teenager desperate to find her own place in the world.

The film has a very measured pace and viewers raised on a diet of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart may struggle to engage with the sombre tone and unhurried direction. But Jordan’s film has substance, two excellent leads and a delightfully morally ambiguous ending.

Bite Me Kate – Underworld Awakening

Vampires are supposed to be scary. If there is one thing that makes the Twilight movies suck, it is that they have forgotten that fact and made vampires into pasty-faced hunky dreamboats.   Vampires prey on humans, they don’t date them. Last year the excellent Stakeland brought the horror back to the vampire genre and provided a bloody antidote to the Twilight barf-fest. Now Kate Beckinsale returns to the character and catsuit of vampire warrior-woman Selene for her third entry in the Underworld series (there is a prequel in which she does not appear, before anyone feels the need to point that out, so technically this is the fourth Underworld movie).

In the prologue, the existence of vampires and lycanthropes (werewolves) is exposed to the waking world, leading to a mass cull to rid humanity of their “infection”. Attempting to flee with her lover Michael, Selene is captured. When she wakes up in a laboratory, years later, she discovers the humans have been experimenting upon a child called Eve (India Eisley) who is a rare vampire-lycan hybrid and with whom Selene shares a strange bond. Selene takes Eve and goes on the run from the human authorities, determined to protect the girl from humans and lycans alike. They find an ally in vampire David (Theo James), all the while pursued by the forces of Antigen, led by Dr Lane (a sanguine Stephen Rea).

Eve hides in shame after wearing white to Goth Night.

Man Marlind and Bjorn Stein take over the directorial duties and to their credit they have greedily embraced the horror elements of the franchise. If the first Underworld was gothic in tone and style, with gorgeous vamps languidly reclining in sprawling, gloomy mansions, Awakening is the industrial Underworld – a loud, pounding onslaught of a movie. The violence is aggressive, unrelenting and at times quite shocking – a shot of Eve being attacked by a werewolf is graphic and unsettling. However, this is no retrograde horror flick in which women are helpless before unstoppable male predators. The most dangerous character here is Selene, consumed by a maternal desire to protect Eve. Selene is far more ferocious than in the previous films and, unlike the appalling Edward in Twilight, she is not shy about sinking her fangs into a human’s jugular when she’s hungry. Beckinsale imbues Selene with an air of power and self-assurance. She is more dynamic than any of the men, a better fighter and, when matched against a larger, more powerful opponent, smarter.

It is arguable, of course, that Selene is a male fantasy construct – a beautiful image of an idealised female form but the character is never presented as being beholden to or defined by the men in her life. She has her own agenda and relies upon no-one but herself, unlike Bella “How can I make him love me?” Swan.

The movie looks tremendous on a big screen and the action scenes are ambitious and extremely well realised. In the first Underworld film, it was never entirely clear what made Selene special in her status as a Death Dealer who hunted werewolves. This time around, it is abundantly clear that Selene is lethal. The sequence in which she tears through a squad of human police is brutal and delivered with bombast and style. The battles with the lycans are bloody affairs, thrilling in their visceral impact, while the climactic showdown provides an almost deafening crescendo of mayhem. The stunt work is top notch, with cars being thrown around and a lovely shot in which Selene knocks over a moving van by charging into the side of it. She’s a bloodthirsty super-heroine who could punch Batman into next week.

There are some plot elements sure to raise a smirk – the humans hold Selene in captivity as a test subject but inexplicably decide to keep her distinctive catsuit, corset and boots in a cabinet close at hand so that moments after escape, Selene is back in her fetish gear. Beckinsale looks amazing but she does rather look like she’s on her way to a goth-industrial nightclub somewhere to spend the night dancing to Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails. Just as in all the films in the Resident Evil franchise, the ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel. If Beckinsale wants to get back in the catsuit again, I’ll be there. Bite me, Kate. Bite me hard.