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Roll over, Count Dracula

Vampire attraction: Twilight resonates with contemporary teen dilemmas.

Twilight (English)

Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli

Director: Catherine Hardwicke

As a film made with teen appeal firmly in mind, Twilight has its grip firmly on the young pulse. How can the target audience resist a movie where a relatively ordinary high school girl — just like them — gets the perfect boyfriend, who is drop dead gorgeous, although a bit pale, but has no designs on her and only wants to love and protect her? The catch — oops! he’s a vampire — makes it all the more erotic.

Well, innocently erotic. For, the tensions between lust and abstinence, held in fragile balance, is what drives Twilight. There’s no sex, but that doesn’t mean the movie isn’t sexy.

In this movie, based on the first book of Stephanie Meyer’s wildly popular saga about vampires and teens, director Catherine Hardwicke cleverly plays with vampire lore to bring it into a contemporary teen world.

High school junior Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), moves from Phoenix to live with her father (Billy Burke) in a perpetually overcast town called Forks. Forks High School proves to be reasonably normal but for a clan of strangely pale young folk, the Cullens. Bella herself, though a bit drippy, also stands out with her air of self-possessed moodiness. The minute she and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) see each other, sparks fly. However, in the best Mills & Boon tradition, he refuses to acknowledge the attraction.

Edward cannot risk getting too involved with Bella because he’s not sure he can control himself and not drink her blood. Instead, he indulges in some melodramatic dialogue — “Your scent is like a drug to me; you are like my own personal brand of heroin” — that only makes Bella want him more. The resonating parallels with contemporary teen dilemmas — to do or not to do — are obvious.

The movie is all repressed passion for the first half. Though nothing much happens, it’s somehow more convincing than the second half where rivalry with a non-vegetarian clan of vampires results in chases, fights and much bloodletting.

PARVATHI NAYAR

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