Ystävät hämärän jälkeen / Let the Right One In. SE (c) 2008 EFTI. D: Tomas Alfredson. SC: John Ajvide Lindqvist from his novel (2004). DP: Hoyte Van Hoytema - shot on Super 35 - digital intermediate - processed back to 35 mm print. Kåre Hedebrant (Oskar), Lina Leandersson (Eli). 114 min. A Sandrew Metronome Distribution release with Finnish subtitles by Anitra Paukkunen. Viewed at Tennispalatsi 12, 28 Nov 2008.
A bleak, cold digital intermediate look.
An original vampire film set in everyday Sweden in a suburb of Stockholm ?in ca 1982?. There are two stories. The permanently 12-year-old girl Eli who can only subsist on human blood. She can only live in the dark, she does not feel cold, her bite is contagious if the victim survives, she can climb the wall of a tenement building. The 12-year-old boy Oskar is the victim of school bullying, which he starts to resist violently.
The film is well made, the angle is original, the actors are convincing, the school and the suburb milieux realistically detailed, the visual composition interesting, and I liked to soundtrack selection of pop music (but not the original score).
But there is a grave confusion in the moral foundation of the story. The film seems to defend vampirism and justify revenge instead of real justice. It is a portrait of solitude which seems to embrace the ethos of grade Z action cinema.
A bleak, cold digital intermediate look.
An original vampire film set in everyday Sweden in a suburb of Stockholm ?in ca 1982?. There are two stories. The permanently 12-year-old girl Eli who can only subsist on human blood. She can only live in the dark, she does not feel cold, her bite is contagious if the victim survives, she can climb the wall of a tenement building. The 12-year-old boy Oskar is the victim of school bullying, which he starts to resist violently.
The film is well made, the angle is original, the actors are convincing, the school and the suburb milieux realistically detailed, the visual composition interesting, and I liked to soundtrack selection of pop music (but not the original score).
But there is a grave confusion in the moral foundation of the story. The film seems to defend vampirism and justify revenge instead of real justice. It is a portrait of solitude which seems to embrace the ethos of grade Z action cinema.
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