You're not a kid, you're a monster, monster, monster

[sovay]

I don't think I can call Låt den rätte komma in—Let the Right One In—the most beautiful film I've seen in theaters this year, because The Fall so amazed me, but it's right up there. So many directors could have taken its core handful of elements and gone for sheer splatter, suspense, even black comedy; instead it's a character piece, like the color of winter twilight, at once remote and tender, not obvious, not comfortable. Am I making it sound like a piece of sculpture, serene and chilly? Some of what I loved about the film is that it's messy: you're dying to be alive when you're twelve years old. Children are monsters. Only some of them drink blood. Only adults are sentimental about it. Let the old dreams die. I don't want to see it remade. I do want to read the book. I want to see what this writer and director do next. And for God's sake, no more sparkling.

Comments

And Furthermore

[ericmvan.livejournal.com]

By identifying the movie as belonging to the teen coming-of-age "genre," I am not referring to tropes or conventions but only concerns. All I mean to say is that its primary concern is with the lives (especially inner) of twelve-year-olds. The movie's primary aim is to make you identify and empathize with a troubled twelve-year-old and hence think and feel about what it's like to be twelve and on the cusp of turning into more of a person. Whatever "coming-of-age" that actually happens to the twelve-year-olds in the movie is either at least somewhat twisted and ambiguous, or entirely thwarted. More magical transcendence of genre.