Interview With The Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

Neil Jordan’s screen adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire is a visually stylish but deadly boring update on the Dracula story.

Brad Pitt plays Louis, a modern day vampire who is telling his story to keen young freelance journo, Christian Slater. This involves a trip back in time to 1790s Louisiana where Louis falls into the clutches of Lestat (Tom Cruise) a wicked sort of vampire who kills with impunity. Louis’ not up to it at first but when he encounters a grief-stricken young girl named Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) whose mother has just died of the plague he can resist no longer and soon the three are killing and sucking blood for all they are worth. Louis however is never entirely sure about Lestat and eventually he sides with Claudia, now become quite wicked herself, to do away with him.

The film rambles on as little more than a smorgasbord of killing and jugular-siphoning until Louis ends up in Paris where he meets Armand (Antonio Banderas) and his band of theatrical vampires who stage some kind of Theatre of the Macabre for ghoulishly horrified upper-class audiences. For me this was the best part of the film although I had no real understanding what it was all supposed to mean having pretty much been lturned off by the pointlessness of the story to date. The staging of this section is deliciously decadent and it is gorgeously photographed by Philippe Rousselot. Unfortunately the film thereafter returns to the modern day and finishes with the ill-judged choice of “Sympathy For The Devil”, performed, I believe, by Guns N’ Roses, over the end credits. Interview With The Vampire is glossy but superficial, like a feature article in Vogue or some similar high-priced fashion magazine and if that’s your idea of a good read then you’ll enjoy this.

 

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