Undergraduates

Låt den rätte komma in (Let the right one in)

Crit

OK, I've never seen Fanny and Alexander, but I suspect that it would not be inapt to say that this film is to Twilight as F&A is to Home Alone. Twilight is a perfectly OK Hollywood teenage-vampire-love story, populated with pretty 90210ish faces and centered on a moral and existential dilemma that we can intellectually respond to, even if the pretty actors don't really convince us that it's any more than an academic exercise. This, on the other hand, is a beautiful, heartbreaking, heartbreakingly beautiful story of 12-year-old love, notwithstanding that one of the 12-year-olds has been 12 for a long time and has unconventional dietary requirements, and the pair's responses to that complication is so real that we, well, bleed for them.

The films have much in common (that "12 for a long time" line occurs in Twilight, as I recall, except that the number is 17), most particularly the central vampire's irresistible attraction to the central nonvamp, and the vamp's recognition of and resistance against the dangerous implications of that attraction. Where Twilight's vamp is part of a loving and protective vamp family, Rätte's has a loving and protective nonvamp father figure who does everything he can to protect her from the most gruesome consequences of her condition. (Funny, only as I wrote that sentence did it occur to me that "father" can hardly be an accurate description of his relationship to this ageless being. Which in turn may answer the question implicit in the Graduate-allusive final scene. Hmmm . . . ) The nonvamp's divorce dynamic is also similar.

That the lovers are preteens, though, and haven't the foggiest notion of what romance entails--Eli first suggests to Oskar that they simply stay as they are, then asks, "Do you do anything special?" when going steady; when he says no, she replies, "OK, then--we'll go steady"--and that, while beautiful in their own way, they lack Hollywood gloss (Eli, in fact, looks and smells a little funky when separated too far from her last meal), makes us believe in them and care for them in a way that I couldn't, at any rate, for Twilight's teens.

Then, too, where the good vamps in Twilight are sissified "vegetarians," feasting only on nonhuman blood, Eli needs to bite a neck now and again, and that's a messy thing. Notably, though, in this version of the vampire myth, apparently a victim who suffers a normally fatal injury after the bloodletting is spared joining the undead, and Eli is careful to administer that mercy, except once when she is interrupted. (Other elements of traditional vampirism are present: as in Bram Stoker's novel [but not, to my recollection, in most films], the vampire must be invited in before crossing a threshold the first time; the vampire can scramble up vertical surfaces with ease and even fly short distances; and cats hate, hate, really hate vampires.)

Seeing Eli's face smeared with her victim's blood, and seeing the sadness in Lina Leandersson's face in the aftermath of the meal, is worth all the prettiness of Twilight put together. Leandersson is, I see, a first-time actor (IMDb is silent on her actual age, but 12's probably pretty close), as is Kåre Hedebrant; hope we see lots more of them, and of director Tomas Alfredson. In fact, how do you say "sequel" in Swedish?

Trailers

• Slumdog Millionaire--You notice that when some form of the word million is in a Danny Boyle title, the film's a lot sweeter and more sentimental than when it contains words like grave or spot or smaller numbers, like 28? Though actually there's sweetness in all of them--it's just not on the surface. Anyway, in the face of lukewarm reviews, I'm in if it comes downtown, which seems likely.