One of the most compelling vampire stories ever written

Rating: 8/10 (21 August 2003)

"Interview with the Vampire", a film based on Anne Rice's first novel of the Vampire Chronicles series is a haunting story of damnation, eternal regret and eternal love. The story begins when Louis (Brad Pitt), a vampire finds an interviewer (Christian sLater) and leads him to his room to tell him his story. The story starts in the 18th century in New Orleans when Louis after a terrible loss in his family (in the film it is implied that he lost his wife and his newborn child but in the book it's his brother that commits suicide) starts to be obsessed with death himself. He then meets a vampire, LeStat (Tom Cruise) who gives him the opportunity to become a vampire, experience what he longed for, which was death, yet still live forever. Louis who was so eager to die finds the lifestyle of the vampires unbearable and in the first time in his life starts to value human life. He starts to hate LeStat for being so senseless and killing everyone and everything he can get his hands on and retreats to eating mouse and other small animals to survive because he can't find the strength to kill a human being. His disgust for LeStat becomes so strong that he is about to leave him when LeStat turns a 5 year old orphan, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) that Louis had fed on but didn't have the courage to kill her, into a vampire. Louis will then stay with LeStat and will become a father to Claudia. As Claudia grows up her relationship with Louis becomes much stronger as they still sleep in the same coffin and she demands to know the truth of how she became a vampire and why she will never have the body of a full-grown woman. Louis tells her the truth which angers her so much that she is willing to take revenge from LeStat. I won't say anything else because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I'll just say that the relationship between Louis and Claudia becomes much stronger after being together for almost a century until an ancient vampire, Armand (Antonio Banderas) and his attraction to Louis, which by the way is mutual, is putting the couple's love in danger. Some might think that the relationship between Louis and Claudia, a 24 year old man and a 5 year old girl is gross but it isn't because vampires are not sexual beings and besides, Claudia despite her diminutive stature is technically 100 years old when they kiss in Paris. Others might be bothered by the attraction between Louis and Armand or even between LeStat and Louis but I want to believe that our society is able to accept homosexuality even if the attraction between the vampires is by no means sexual, since vampires as I have already said are not sexual beings. There are a lot more I'd like to say about this film but there's really no reason to do such a thing in a review. Interview with the Vampire is a fascinating and heart-breaking story and one of the best stories about the vampire's eternal pain and their internal struggles between their morals and their needs.