Cinema review: Only Lovers Left Alive

Anyone willing to adjust to Jim Jarmusch's laid-back approach should find this sublimely melancholy gem a delight.

Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston in Only Lovers Left Alive. Sandro Kopp

Only Lovers Left Alive

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Starring: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska

⋆⋆⋆

As a filmmaker at home on the fringes, it seems fitting that Jim Jarmusch has alighted on cinema and literature's ultimate outsiders: vampires. Only Lovers Left Alive is a far cry from the adolescent world of Twilight or the provocative fantasies of True Blood, however. Typically left-field, it offers a woozy romantic comedy, in which the aged – but evergreen – lovers, Adam (Hiddleston) and Eve (Swinton), hook up in Detroit, only to have their love nest disturbed by Eve's wild-child sister (Wasikowska). The film puts a wry Jarmuschian spin on familiar tropes without trying to reinvent the wheel. Impatient viewers may find the pace too slow. But anyone willing to adjust to Jarmusch's laid-back approach should find this sublimely melancholy gem a delight.