[7.9/10] *Only Lovers Left Alive* is a mood piece. There is a plot. Things happen. There’s conflict and challenges. But it’s mostly stylish emo vampires hanging out in filthy but impossibly cool locales contemplating the eternal quandaries of life. I don’t have a problem with that. I wouldn’t exactly call this a hangout movie exactly, but it’s a film you’re meant to luxuriate in, rather than steadily consume, and it fits that bill.

To that end, it is a profoundly languid film. Writer-director Jim Jarmusch spends plenty of time letting his scenes unfold. Entire songs go by with minimal cuts. Conversations are allowed to linger and meander. Moments can stretch until they’ve exhausted themselves, unburdened by plot or pace. I hesitate to call a movie centered on a couple of heroin chic vampires down-to-earth, but there’s a strange, open-hearted naturalism to the picture that gives it an inviting atmosphere.

That approach works for the subject matter. Our protagonists are a pair of intertwined immortals. There is Adam, the semi-suicidal musician who feels that the “zombies” (read: humans) have polluted the Earth and their own blood, and is seemingly ready to give up on this world. There is Eve, his distaff counterpart who takes a wider view, marveling at the majesty of nature and evincing the sense that what falls will rise again.

With an opposing black and white color pallete between them, they seem to represent the optimistic and pessimistic sides of existentialism, views born by their longevity and sense of having seen and done so much. That pace, then, suits the two of them. That’s particularly true for Adam, who’s afflicted with ennui. In that, the slow rhythms of the movie work for his spiritual and emotional lethargy. There is the sense that for someone who’s lived so long and witnessed all he has, the world has become a bore, the goings on around him unimportant and uninteresting. Jarmusch conveys his low-burning disgust and detachment from all this decaying wasteland.

But it also allows him to represent the equal and opposite view in Eve, who means to savor the beauty, nurture kindness and friendship, and drink in the beauty and wonder of this place. For her, that pace lends itself to appreciation, to a mindfulness of the beauty of a song or the contemplation of a gong-sound-emitting diamond in the sky. *Only Lovers Left Alive* anchors itself on beings who have all the time in the world, and paces itself to match. That’s a good and creative choice.

It’s also interesting to see what choices Jarmusch makes in terms of what vampire lore to keep and what to jettison and what to invent from whole cloth. These vampires still shun the light and need to drink blood, but other traditions are changed or slanted. They’re still vulnerable to stakes, apparently, but the prospect of a wooden bullet seems just as likely to do Adam in if he so chose. And they can enter without being invited, but it’s considered very bad luck, to say the least.

There’s also rituals and consideration. They all wear gloves, with the touching and biting of hands seeming to be an intimate introduction. Moreover, they can become sick and die, depending on what kind of blood they drink and whether they have any at all. The pollutedness of human blood is taking its toll, to where the major players have to lean on doctors for “the good stuff.” With it, they seem to enter an almost drug-like state of euphoria, and without it, they too may perish from starvation and exhaustion.

That threat is interesting, because it disrupts the seemingly true hindrance to these vampires’ lives -- an excess of comfort and a lack of challenges. There’s the sense of Adam in particular having the freedom to do anything but wanting to do nothing, while Eve tries to rekindle his passion for the world and joy and really anything. There’s the sense of the two of them as a pair of functionally drug-addicted rockstars, free from obligation, but with one finding it freeing and the other left anhedonic.

Despite that, there’s a clear bolt of the romantic between the two of them. Some of the film’s most enjoyable stretches feature the pair bounding through Detroit, roiling or reveling in the history and future of this shell of a city. They light each other, in exploration and in slumber, with a lived-in affection that channels centuries spent in one another’s company. The sweet familiarity livens the picture when it needs it most, making the time spent with the two of them inviting and warm despite the sunken-eyed pallor of it all.

But even that hint of bliss is punctured by the arrival of Eve’s sister Eva, whose reckless hedonism introduces death, conflict, escape, hardship, and even desperation in the couple’s lives. *Only Lovers Left Alive* features a few too many cutesy references about hanging out with Byron or living through the Inquisition, but there’s pathos when that path leads them to witnessing their friend, the former Christopher Marlowe, dying from a lack of good sustenance.

In his final moment, the film evinces a sense of hidden purity. Adam doesn't want to be publicly associated with his music, whether in the present with his emo rock “funeral music” or centuries ago when he was sharing it with Schubert. The vamps decry Shakespeare as an illiterate charlatan, but seem to take more joy in the words themselves persisting apart from whose name attaches to them.

With that comes the ultimate irony of the film. Jarmuch’s vampires think them so above the “zombies.” Adam finds life with them such an unappetizing proposition that he makes plans for suicide. They view themselves quite superior to the mortal artists who borrow their works and seek only the glory. As highfalutin as they are about science and beauty and their wincing at its corruption, they’re not quite ready to abandon the world that contains it or give up their comforts when push comes to shove. Instead, they sink their teeth into that beauty, to sustain them enough to prolong their ennui or existential savoring a little longer.

As slow-moving as *Only Lovers Left Alive* is in that effort, it works as an experience, a luxurious world of pallid, impossibly stylish immortals there to unpack the great mysteries of the universe. It’s less a story than a visit with some peculiar friends, quietly hypocritical but unique and fascinating nonetheless. It’s a film about a look and a feeling and an atmosphere, born by those no longer bound to a mortal coil, but strangely relatable in its world-weary, wonder-seeking splendor.