THAT’S WHY THE LADY IS A VAMP (BYZANTIUM)

About three years ago, at the height of ‘Twilight’ mania and the popular HBO series ‘True Blood’, a clinical psychologist Dr Belisa Vranich posed the question in the Huffington Post: why have vampires consistently fascinated audiences?

She came up with 10 reasons which can be summarised as follows.

Vampire stories resonate with teenagers because they are always loners but not lonely - they are creatures who are different from the rest of society and function without ever needing to conform or seek the approval of their contemporaries.

Vampires are minimalists who have no need for fancy gadgetry, weaponry or technology.

Vampires always look cool, with colours that never go out of fashion.

Vampires have fangs and resort to arguably the most primitive and compellingly shocking form of violence - assaulting people with their mouths.

Vampires are intelligent and in some stories have telepathic powers.

Vampires are powerful in an understated way, unlike the burly action heroes or superheroes that dominate our movie screens.

Vampires are fearless, surviving all kinds of disasters and persecutions.

Vampires only care about themselves and their own needs - most notably their lust for blood.

Vampires are sensitive, tormented souls - expressing their emotions, sensuality and sensitivity in a grandiose way.

Vampires are the archetypal bad boys - they are evil, yet sexy.

Over the last four years, it has been difficult to escape vampires on the big screen - whether it was Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s uneven ‘Dark Shadows’, Adam Sandlier voicing a vampire in the iffy animated comedy ‘Hotel Transylvania’ or Tomas Alfredson’s acclaimed Swedish drama ‘Let the Right One In’.

The continued fascination with the genre owes not just to the success of the ‘Twilight’ movies and ‘True Blood’ but Joss Whedon’s popular TV series ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Francis Coppola’s ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’.

But there is no doubt that Neil Jordan also played his part, with his lavish 1994 adaptation of Anne Rice’s ‘Interview with the Vampire’, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dundst, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater and Stephen Rea, which earned him his biggest box office hit.

Jordan has returned to the genre in 2013 with his new movie, ‘Byzantium’, teaming up again with producer Stephen Woolley but, typically, he has given the format a new twist - a feminine twist.

The principal characters are a mother and daughter vampire duo, on the run from a shadowy band of vampires known as The Brotherhood.

Clara (played by Gemma Arterton) and her daughter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) have been forced to move from town to town over the centuries after Clara escaped a brothel during the Napoleonic era and discovered the key to potential vampire immortality in the Aran Islands, off the coast of Ireland.

The Brotherhood reluctantly accepts Clara but turns against her when she breaks their rule that no other female should be admitted into their exclusive vampire circle. 

She does this by taking Eleanor to the islands to become a vampire.

The voluptuous Clara uses her body and hundreds of years experience in the sex trade to earn a living for both of them, as they move from location to location but she also satisfies her vampire bloodlust by killing the corrupt or anyone who threatens to expose their true identity.

Clara is also a protective mother to the teenage Eleanor but their relationship is turbulent.

By way of contrast, Eleanor only exercises her need to sup blood through mercy killings of elderly people seeking a release from the ravages of old age and infirmity.

At the start of the film, Eleanor and Clara are forced to flee a council estate in the middle of a typically wet English winter to a dreary seaside town.

There, while trying to earn cash as a prostitute, Clara stumbles upon a lonely soul Noah (Daniel Mays), who is grieving for his mother, and takes advantage of him by moving into 'Byzantium' - a rundown seaside boarding house that used to be a hotel. 

Noah has run the business into the ground but spotting an opportunity to scrape a living, Clara turns it into a brothel.

While wandering through the town, Eleanor strikes up a friendship with Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), an awkward young waiter who is studying in a local college and has been recovering from leukaemia.

She enrols in a storytelling class but disturbs her tutor (Tom Hollander) and the principal (Maria Doyle Kennedy) when she writes during an autobiographical assignment about how she became a vampire.

While hugely impressed by the quality of her writing, Hollander's character fears Eleanor has made the tale up as a cry for help.

With the Brotherhood also closing in on the duo, Jordan ratchets up the tension with all the experience he can muster as an accomplished and classy filmmaker.

‘Byzantium’ is a typically brooding work from the Sligo born author and director, working from a lively script by Moira Buffini based on her play 'A Vampire Story'.

As with other Jordan works, sex and death looms large with Gemma Arterton's character literally embodying both.

But it is also a coming of age drama and a film about sexual politics - with Clara, in particular, struggling to overcome male oppression.

Jordan returns to the supernatural myths of ‘The Company of Wolves’ and ‘Interview of the Vampire’ but there are echoes of other films in his canon there.

are flashes too of other Jordan movies - most notably the seedy sex trade depicted in 'Mona Lisa', the double lives adopted by the lead characters in 'We're No Angels' and 'The Crying Game', the awkward teenage seaside resort friendship in 'The Miracle', the dysfunctional family dynamics of 'The Butcher Boy', a female character caught in a cycle of violence like 'The Brave One' and a sense of foreboding similar to that which dominated 'Mona Lisa' and 'In Drea

Sean Bobbitt's lush cinematography, in particular, recalls 'In Dreams' with its gorgeous reds but he also brilliantly captures the cheap neon lights of the sleepy, wet seaside resort in winter.

As in previous movies, Jordan also tips a nod to other filmmakers including the British Hammer horror movie stable and Alfred Hitchcock - most notably 'Psycho' and 'The Birds'.

Powered along by a strong screenplay, 'Byzantium' also works because of the strength of its two female leads.

Saoirse Ronan turns in yet another flawless performance - perfectly capturing the torment of Eleanor who has been condemned to live for centuries as a perpetual teenager and is desperate to break free.

Gemma Arterton convinces as the wily and savage Clara - using her sexual allure to devastating effect.

The camera fetishises Arterton's body and, in particular, her cleavage - leaving Jordan and Bobbitt open to criticism that it is too lascivious.

However this is not some cheap saucy postcard performance.

Gemma Arterton shows much more depth and impressively conveys a mother's profound love and self-sacrifice for her child  - even if Clara's protectionist instincts towards Eleanor are sometimes oppressive and occasionally psychotic.

Of all the characters, Clara appears to embody all ten of Dr Vranich's reasons for the enduring popularity of the vampire genre and Arterton seems to relish it.

Tom Hollander, Daniel Mays and Maria Doyle Kennedy also deliver perfectly judged supporting performances.

There are decent turns too from Jonny Lee Miller as the lecherous and corrupt Napoleonic era British Army Captain Ruthven, Sam Reilly as his military colleague Darvell and Israeli actor, Uri Gavriel as the menacing Brotherhood heavy, Savella. 

But oddly, as in Jordan's 'The Miracle', if there is one flawed performance it is that of the male teenage love interest, Caleb Landry Jones whose sickly but rather stiff Frank sports a rather bizarre Dutch (or is it Danish?) accent.

Landry Jones' performance isn't terrible. 

It's just a minor disappointment in an otherwise entertaining and quirky film.

By the time this review appears, ‘Byzantium’ may well have disappeared from Northern Ireland's multiplexes but catch it when it screens again at the Queen's Film Theatre between June 21 and 27.

It deserves to be seen on the big screen and, while it may not be everyone's cup of tea, it certainly has enough stirring set pieces and themes that will linger in the brain for some time.

('Byzantium' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on May 31, 2013. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)