I am speaking of Let The Right One In, a Swedish film based on a novel of the same name. It is scheduled to be remade in English by the director of Cloverfield.
This is a fascinating film to watch. All the landscapes and scenes look if anything banal or stark, yet somehow achieve a surreal beauty. Which in turn highlights the odd nature of the story--a weird tale of love, friendship and loyalty amid loneliness, murder, cruelty, (implied) pedophilia and quiet desperation.
Oskar is a 12-year-old boy who lives outside 1980s Stockholm. His parents are divorced, he is estranged from them in any case, while he has become the victim of bullies who have marked him out as different. And he is--a lonely, rather brilliant little boy with no friends and a simmering rage against those who torment him
Next door to him, a older man moves in with his daughter Eli. When Oskar meets Eli, it is the dead of winter and she's not even wearing a heavy coat. She says she's forgotten how to feel the cold. But they talk, and he lends her his rubix cube.
So a friendship/love story begins.
Yeah, Eli is a vampire. From what I've read, she's actually two hundred years old. In the film she simply says "I've been twelve for a long time." Who is her companion/helper? My own impression is that he is some kind of child molester who has fallen in love. But Oskar eventually comes to the conclusion that his new and dear (and only) friend Eli is a vampire. This is not something he is totally comfortable with, but on the other hand it is clear he loves her. More, she in her own way loves him. She is the one who tells him what to do with the bullies at school. She is the one who listens to his stories, and asks questions that shows she sees him for real, all of him.
Interestingly, the film provides quite a lot of vampire lore without ever explaining it--what happens when vampires go into the sun, how to make a vampire, why they don't enter until invited (the source of the title, btw), etc. More, it sets up an expectation from the time we realize the essence of what is going on--a scene we expect to see, and which does eventually play out. Yet by then that scene is a sideshow. What really matters is when two people look at each other, and smile simply because that is what they are doing.
Being a fan of vampire films, I have a "top ten (or so)" list, which includes Bram Stoker's Dracula and Interview with the Vampire as well as Vampire Journal and Lips of Blood and Sundown. This one goes on that list. Haunting, beautiful and disturbing as well as sweet, violent and oddly satisfying. I recommend it highly indeed.
Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICp4g9p_rgo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_the_Right_One_In
www.aintitcool.com/node/38839
www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/
