KinoCult presents: “Only Lovers Left Alive” | Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) by Jim Jarmusch

December 4 | 19:00 | Lumiere Cinema

Adam and Eve have been lovers for centuries, but they live on different continents. He is a reclusive musician surrounded by rare guitars, analog equipment, and the majestic ruins of Detroit. She spends her nights among books and the narrow streets of Tangier. When Adam's melancholy deepens, Eve crosses the world to be with him again.

They are vampires, but Jim Jarmusch is not particularly interested in genre rules. For him, this is above all a love story — about two refined outsiders who have experienced centuries of human genius and human folly, who continue to find pleasure in music, literature, science, and each other's presence.

Here, immortality is not a fantasy of power, but a matter of taste. Adam and Eve have long given up killing for food and procure clean blood in a far more civilized way. They wear dark glasses at night, treat rare guitars as museum exhibits, and move through the modern world with the decadent elegance of people who have already seen almost everything.

The title also has its secret history. Only Lovers Left Alive comes from a novel about youth rebellion, gifted to Jarmusch by his friend and mentor Nicholas Ray. Ray once owned the rights to the adaptation, which later passed to Mick Jagger, but no film was ever made. Decades later, Jarmusch takes the title for a completely different story - that of the last lovers who still know how to live.

The music is the lifeblood of the film. The hypnotic compositions of Jarmusch, his band SQ?RL, and Dutch lutenist Jozef van Wissem meet rockabilly, psychedelic rock, and the voice of Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan. Before filming, the director prepares a mixtape for the actors, setting the rhythm and atmosphere of the film.

Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux transforms Detroit and Tangier into two faces of the same night. The camera glides through velvety darkness, saturated colors, crumbling architecture, and rooms filled with objects from other eras. The result is a vampire film that looks and sounds like a slow, intoxicating rock album.

“Only Lovers Left Alive” had its world premiere in the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013, where Jozef van Wissem received the Cannes Soundtrack Award for the music.

Beautiful, melancholic, and endlessly sensual - a film for those who refuse to simply exist and insist on staying alive.

director and screenwriter: Jim Jarmusch
starring: Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, John Hurt, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright
cinematography: Yorick Le Saux
editing: Affonso Gonçalves
production design: Marco Bittner Rosser
costumes: Bina Daigeler
music: Jozef van Wissem, SQ?RL
runtime: 123 min.
language: English
subtitles: Bulgarian