romanticism

Rating: Null/10 (6 November 2010)

This was actually a very good surprise. I was prepared to hate this film. The books appeared as half-baked teen stuff, empty and just made to capitalize on the doors to otherworldliness as Harry Potter defined it to the XXI century: strange beings, odd variations on our real world, and a link to this same world, that makes the story and characters appear as if they could really exist, thus engaging more the audiences to whom this is intended. This Twilight series had an extra dullness that put me away: it revolved on the "fantasy" clichés, and to that, added the vampire film world. So it was playing safe twice.
The one thing that truly fails is the male character casting. Robert Pattinson is a stain here, he has no presence whatsoever. He throws his lines as if he was sitting in a toilet, his facial expression is bloodless, but not in a vampiresque fashion, his pose is artificial, although that works for his character (lucky there). I think they wanted to capitalize the actor who had had a short yet emotional character in the Potter series, and thus attract even more of the audiences of Potter. On the other hand, Kristen Stewart was a nice surprise. I don't know if she'll get out well of the teen movie world, but i'll be wanting to watch new things from her. She was tense in an unstressed way that usually we don't have in such young actresses.
But what i did like was the general mood chosen to this film. There is a very sweet and tense sense of romanticism that goes through the film, and that's what really caught my attention. It's a genuinely not corny melancholy, where the growing adolescent feelings between vampire and human take a sweet place at the center of the narrative. Regular readers of my comments know and appreciate such films which can convincingly build and sustain a mood, like an invisible glow which surrounds every element of the film. Wong Kar-Wai is the all-time master of this. So i care about trying to understand what produces such effect. Here i think the first anchor of this mood is Stewart and her controlled, intense performance (i wonder if she learned it from Foster). The second anchor is the cinematography and the very well succeeded choice of colors and sets. But the most important thing is the camera work. The hand held camera in the closeups while the lovers have dialogs are really something of superior class. Editing helps, but how the shots were conceived really works well. Some dialog moments are worthy of some bits of some Lumet's films. That is saying a lot.
My opinion: 3/5
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