Interview With a Whining Sadsack

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 2007)

Prior to Interview With the Vampire it had always seemed like quite a fun idea to be a bloodsucker. Not only do you get to spend eternity feasting on large bosomed women, but you get to stay up late, too. Who could ask for more? Well, Neil Jordan put pay to those notions. Here we have vampires who wallow in guilt, act bored and feed on rats. In other words, immortality sucks.
However, the film doesn't. And the film succeeds because it makes the undead the focus of the story rather than being a sideshow. For once they're allowed to be something other than monsters. But that's not to say that everything in the film works. For example, why do vampires always have to have long hair? Is this part of the curse of being immortal  that you can't have a decent haircut? Indeed, this may very well be the case, as there's a scene in the film that addresses this very issue. At one point Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) hacks her hair off only to see it grow back. No wonder so many vampires go mental.
Another vampiric cliché I can't get my head around are the clothes. Does getting bitten suddenly give you a taste for rumpled cuffs and billowing shirts? Of course this is mainly a result of the goth subculture that has appropriated these types of stories, but I can't help but feel that nothing is less practical as regards bloodsucking than a large white shirt  eating spaghetti Bolognese in a similar sort of garb is bad enough.
But the goth influence, for better or worse, is present through the whole story. For instance you have the main character's perpetual moaning. Now, in less assured hands, this could have rendered the film unwatchable, but Jordan juggles the tone expertly, including enough soul searching and despair to make it interesting, but never wallowing in it. Another goth influence is the rampant homoeroticism. More than once it seems that we're going to have some hot man on man vampire love action, but it never actually materialises. Instead what you have is story about a thinly veiled gay couple. Take the first encounter between Lestat and Louis. Louis is bitten and then shown ascending to the heavens in a painful but orgasmic embrace. And then later you have Lestat's desperate attempts to ensure that his 'companion' doesn't stray. He gives Louis a daughter and they become a dysfunctional family.
However, I think the family aspect is one of the film's most successful elements. It allows room for the characters to develop and it also provides some much needed humour. One of my favourite bits has to be when Claudia is seen killing various hired hands. There's a dressmaker who gets bitten and then, best of all, a piano teacher gets killed  the comic timing, with the man's head striking the piano at the right moment, is wonderful. And I also love the way that Lestat is only annoyed that she's killing in their household  she's disciplined like she hasn't tidied her room properly.
But while there are plenty of humorous moments, the film does also have some more disturbing scenes. For example, there's the prolonged killing of a buxom wench who gets to experience her own coffin (but even that scene has some dry humour). And then you have an attractive woman getting fed on at a pretentious French vampire theatre. Both scenes don't hold back and help lend the film a seriousness and weight that is seldom seen in a genre that is often bogged down by camp.
Another excellent scene that pulls no punches is the scene where Louis exacts his revenge on a group of garlic eating bloodsuckers. He burns them and chops them into pieces. And it's kind of what you've always been waiting for someone to do in a vampire film. After all, I can't be the only one who's wondered whether so called immortal creatures would be so immortal if you chopped them in half and burnt them to a crispcan I? Obviously not.
And that leads me to another wonderful scene. I love the re-emergence of Lestat after he's 'murdered'. It's superbly filmed with Cruise obscured by billowing curtains as he plays the piano. And the idea of him having to survive on the blood of crocodiles, toads and snakes is a magnificent one.
And it must be pointed out that Cruise is excellent in the film. As he's proved recently there's something rather disturbing under the million dollar grin, and it certainly comes out here. In fact, I always think he's more convincing as a bastard. Magnolia, Collateral and Rain Man are other prime examples. But one negative that comes out of his presence is the fact that the film suffers when he's not there. I mean, Pitt is pretty good in the film, but his role is rather thankless. Louis certainly isn't a barrel of laughs (unlike Lestat who has lots of memorable moments, one of my favourites being his dance with Claudia's dead mother  I love the way he drops her dead body on the floor like she's a piece of trash).
Almost as memorable as Lestat, though, is Kirsten Dunst's performance as Claudia. Petulant and greedy, she pulls off a difficult character with ease. Indeed, it's rather strange seeing Dunst perform so well, because she's certainly failed to live up to her early promise in her adult roles.
The only weak link in the film is Banderas. There's nothing behind the posturing and half of his dialogue is unintelligible. But the magnificent visuals, lush score and impressive production values make his presence easy to forget  sure the film is one of glittering surfaces with petulant whining masquerading as depth, but the film has enough going for it to make the shortcomings easy to forgive.