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Bite
me, Edward: Stewart and Pattinson in Twilight. |
Of
Monsters and Maidens
By
Ann Morrow
Twilight
Directed
by Catherine Hardwicke
Considering that it’s adapted from the mega-selling novel
that’s had teenage girls (and some of their moms) swooning
since its publication, Twilight the movie is rather
drippy, noticeably calculated for the young-adult market.
The reportedly hypnotic sexual tension between introverted
Isabella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and her vampire boyfriend,
Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), is homogenized onscreen
by dialogue with all the pulse-pounding ardor of such exchanges
as Edward matter-of-factly confessing, “I’m designed to kill,”
and Bella tossing off her reply, “I don’t care,” as though
he’d just told her he’d been cut from the debate team. TV
screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg’s trite sound bites aside,
though, Twilight does have a mildly seductive allure,
and much of it comes from the preternaturally pretty (and
talented) Stewart, who gives Isabella a haunted yearning that
smolders through the film’s lapses of seriousness and suspense.
Bella first sees Edward when he makes an entrance at her new
high school with his posse of vampire foster-siblings, a quintet
swathed in an aura of unapproachable hauteur. Edward notices
Bella in the midst of her new-girl popularity—Bella having
moved from her Mom’s in Arizona to live with her policeman
father in rainy northwest Washington. A nearby mist-drenched
forest primeval provides an atmospheric background for Edward’s
frolicking displays of super-undeaded strength and agility,
but before his unusual courtship commences—he saves Bella’s
life by halting a careening car with his fist—Bella must overcome
his initial repugnance to her. With a minimum of fuss, and
some groan-inducing repartee, Bella accepts that Edward’s
lust is of the epicurean variety: his deadly temptation is
to devour her, not deflower her. It may be the last taboo
left for today’s sexually active teens.
This tension (cagily updated from Stoker’s 19th-century demonizing
of venereal disease and death-in-childhood) gives the story
its romantic oomph, along with the broody chemistry between
Stewart and Pattinson (though Pattinson isn’t nearly as handsome
in white makeup as he was as the athletic Cedric Diggory in
the Harry Potter franchise). Since Twilight’s
refreshingly vivacious students dress in jeans and parkas,
and the vampires can cavort during the day, the usual brocaded
and candlelit ambience is ably replaced by the fog- softened
cinematography, Carter Burwell’s lovely score, and seamless
stunt work that sends the vampires flying through treetops
and sprinting like cheetahs.
One of the novel’s clever gambits is that the Cullens are
bound by oath from preying on humans, because Edward’s foster
father (Peter Facinelli) is a doctor. The virility of the
Cullen coven is tested by the arrival of a trio of menacing,
and hungry, vampires who put the delectable Bella in mortal
peril. More intriguing than the competent fight scenes, however,
are the film’s black-and-white allusions to past events, especially
the references to another supernatural force—the wolf people,
forerunners of the region’s Native American population, including
Bella’s friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner). It’s likely that Catherine
Hardwicke, a talented director (Thirteen, Lords
of Dogtown) is feeling her way into the material here,
and if so, the expected sequel could be a follow-up
for all ages.
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