Saturday, June 6, 2009
Pre-Teen Love and Vampires
Oskar is a twelve year old who lives with his mother in an apartment overlooking a snow filled square in a suburb of Helsinki. His days at school are filled with encounters with intimidating bullies. It is the 1960s but the viewer is only made aware of that by closely looking at clothing styles or noting there are no devices digital, only a portable turntable in the apartment. Eli lives next door to Oskar, she is also twelve and lives with a distant man presumably her father. Late in the film she tells Oskar she is twelve, but that she has been twelve for a very long time.
Låt den rätte komma in aka Let the Right One In is a 2008 film by Sweedish director Tomas Alfredson based on a novel and screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It provides an interesting and engaging twist on the vampire film, which. let's face it, has been around almost as long as film itself.
In our current cinematic landscape of so much sameness and so many remakes, the vision of Let the Right One In stands out. Alfredson creates a controlled kind of environment a bit reminiscent of his Sweedish forefather Ingmar Bergman during his sixties period. To great measure it succeeds because the two young actors are the right fit for their roles. Kåre Hedebrant is wonderful as Oskar. As Alfredson says in the DVD featurette, the film is mostly told from the point of Oskar's point of view. Therefore, his reaction shots must count for plenty. The mysterious vampiress neighbor, played by Lina Leandersson also has the right look somewhere between Darlene on the old Roseanne show and a model goth archetype. And there is a kind of counterpoint in the film between the fantastic and preposterous and dialog and situations that feel authentic and real.
There are some moments of graphic violence, but much of it has a kind of clinical feel to it. There are some terrific set pieces one finds in a horror film including a finale that is absolutely unforgettable, but Let the Right One In is a surprisingly quiet film. Some of this is due to a very sophisticated sound design instead of a traditional music soundtrack. And the story plays well because it doesn't lose sight of three major elements: a boy, a girl (sort of), and the outside world around them, which in many good love stories, after and before Romeo and Juliet, threatens their bond and its possibilities.
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:31 AM
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