Rent Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
3.4 of 5 from 381 ratings
1h 58min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- From cult director Jim Jarmusch and with an all-star cast including Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, and John Hurt, 'Only Lovers Left Alive' is a film about music, love, and the transience of human culture. Set against the romantic desolation of Detroit and Tangier, Hiddleston plays Adam, an underground musician who is reunited with his enigmatic lover Eve (Swinton). Their love story has endured several centuries, but their idyll is soon disrupted by Eve's wild younger sister (Wasikowska). Can these wise but fragile outsiders continue to survive as the modern world collapses around them?
- Actors:
- Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, John Hurt, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi, Carter Logan, Aurelie Thepaut, Ali Amine, Dave W., Ego Sensation, Nick Name, Fouad El Achaari, Hawchi Mustapha, Abdelkader Dourkan, Mohamed Chairi Felah, Bilal Chair Felah, Omar Raissouli, Yasmine Hamdan
- Directors:
- Jim Jarmusch
- Producers:
- Reinhard Brundig, Jeremy Thomas
- Voiced By:
- Loïc Corbery, Catherine Wilkening, Alex Descas, Matthieu Sampeur, Juliette Allain, Georges Claisse
- Writers:
- Jim Jarmusch
- Studio:
- Soda Pictures
- Genres:
- Comedy, Drama, Horror, Romance
- Collections:
- Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Tilda Swinton, Introducing a British Film Family
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 15/09/2014
- Run Time:
- 123 minutes
- Languages:
- English Audio Description DTS 2.0, English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.85:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Travelling At Night With Jim Jarmusch
- Deleted and Extended Scene
- Music Video: "Hal" by Yasmine Hamdan
- Interviews with Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston and Mia Wasikowska
- Trailers
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Reviews (6) of Only Lovers Left Alive
Failed Potential - Only Lovers Left Alive review by CP Customer
I liked the idea of this, a sort of brooding modern-day vampire love story set among the ruins Detroit, but after a while its inertia began to grate on me, as the lead character, (played by Tom Hiddleston as a man with a bit of a headache), mopes and sulks around his house like an adolescent goth. His partner, played by Tilda Swinton, comes off better, but here the differences are hammered home with the subtlety of a wooden stake: she dresses in pale colours, white or beige, has blond hair and pale complexion and smiles a lot, while he dresses in dark colours with black hair and scowls a lot. After this has been established - in about three minutes - not a lot happens. The Chekhovian concept of introducing a gun in the first act if you're going to use it in the third is half followed through, and the couple talk about all the famous people they've known in their long lives - apparently they used to hobnob with Keats, Shelley, Byron...obviously not the kind of vampires to keep a low profile or waste their time waiting tables or even being doctors. After much forboding and ominous "I had a dream about Eva last night" her sister Eva turns up and is played by Mia Wasikowska as a very annoying bratty teenager, which sets off a barely-interesting chain of events (although this does deliver the funniest line of the film) and the film sputters out from there. Beautifully shot, it has to be said, but otherwise rather empty and, due to its almost perverse avoidance of drama, quite dull.
2 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Amazing if you get it - Only Lovers Left Alive review by PW
Beautiful visually, mentally keeps you on your toes, you need to see the world from a larger perspective to 'get' this film. No action or much tension but musically and emotionally it has depth.
2 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
The vampires are almost irrelevant - Only Lovers Left Alive review by PR
This is NOT a vampire film, not really. The vampires are but an excuse, a vehicle, to criticize Mankind and its waste - persecution, even- of the occasional talented individual among the mediocrity (the aptly-named "Zombies" by the hero) and its disregard for what really matters, such as science, nature, art and historical perspective.
Relentlessly, Mankind walks into self-pollution, undervaluing the great potential of the human soul and intellect. It takes many centuries of experience and learning to appreciate that fact… and, unfortunately, only vampires have that scope.
This film is also about building a really long-lasting love relationship, and, for the coup de grace, the film also humbly recognizes that, ultimately, the biological imperative to survive overrides any philosophic-artistic niceties; even sophisticated vampires need feeding more than anything else.
A very original, well-acted film that deserves all the praise it got, even if occasionally for all the wrong reasons, in my opinion.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
Only Lovers Left Alive review by George Hooper - Cinema Paradiso
While a film doesn’t need to be fast paced to be considered good it does need a pace, something to push it out of the starting blocks and give it a head start. That doesn’t so much happen when it comes to Only Lovers Left Alive, in fact the film just treats its subject material like the mundane, an element of the film that the director clearly sees as witty irony while the rest of us mortals are just left with the vampire film equivalent of dial-up when really, we wanted broadband.
The film follows Adam (Tom Hiddleston), a immortal rocker who drinks human blood supplied by a doctor while he works on his latest music. His wife Eve (Tilda Swinton) returns to be with Adam but before long her sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska), an immortal and rebellious troublemaker begins ruining their simple and mundane existence leading to many unexpected events, some of which may prove fatal.
Despite the many dangers presented in the film there is never really a sense of dread. The fact that anything could happen doesn’t even feel like a possibility as something would have to take place in the first place. Adam’s life is dull, he may have wit to boot (Hiddleston doing some fine comedic work) but his life feels less cinematic, more anti-climactic. Ava’s arrival does change the dynamic of the film but only as a way of getting Adam out of his funk.
While Eve does make a pleasant enough addition to the film and Swinton shares great chemistry with the all around affable Hiddleston its not enough to make the film even close to enjoyable with too much time wasted on ambiance and mood and not enough on story and actual progression. The film feels like it is a step towards getting Adam and Eve back into the vampire game, a kind of Stella Gets Her Groove back but with the blood sucking persuasion and the unfortunate thing is people without purpose don’t interest and at his core Adam is completely purposeless and so is the film.