Fresh young blood

Swedish director Tomas Alfredson on
his poignant pre-teen vampire film
Let the Right One In

HORMONAL HORROR:
Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson

by MALCOLM FRASER

When it comes to pre-teen vampire romance films, there’s an embarrassment of riches this week. For the Hollywood version, look no further than goth-chick-lit adaptation Twilight. But the more discriminating viewer can also partake of this strange new subgenre thanks to Let the Right One In, from veteran Swedish director Tomas Alfredson.

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a socially awkward 12-year-old who’s frequently tormented at school by a vicious group of bullies. Back at home in a grim suburban housing project, he makes friends with neighbour Eli (Lina Leandersson), a mysterious loner and, we soon find out, a bloodthirsty vampire.

Adapted by writer John Ajvide Lindqvist from his own novel, the story manages to be painfully real despite its supernatural elements. “This novel was given to me by a friend of mine, who happens to be one of the producers,” recalls Afredson, on the phone from Sweden. “Usually I really hate it when people give me books, because I like to find my own reading. But he really was persuasive with this one. I read it, I remember, three years ago on a beach in Poland. I really couldn’t let it go. Twenty-four hours later, I was totally stuck with it.

“I think it was the love story between the children that was the strongest,” he continues, “and the very unsentimental way this story is told by the author. Also, it’s really strong because it’s autobiographical, and it gives it some kind of authentic touch—except for the vampire, of course,” he laughs. “John was very bullied when he was a kid, and he experienced almost everything that was described in the book. So that gives it a lot of strength, because it’s true.”

SCARE TACTICS

This emotional truth is complemented by Alfredson’s style, which is subtle and delicate even when the content is brutal, and somehow averts nearly all the overdone clichés that have made the horror genre so predictable. According to the director, he didn’t go out of his way to avoid these tropes. “It just came about, because I’m not so interested in horror—I’m not so educated either,” he demurs. “In Sweden, I’m most famous for doing comedy and drama.”

NORTHERN TOUCH: Alfredson

The challenge of the horror genre, he explains, is that “it becomes very cheesy when it’s not properly made. In comedy, people would get mad or bored if it’s not funny, but if a horror film isn’t scary, it’s laughable. But I think I found a way to get through.”

This modest description belies the film’s refreshingly original look and feel. “I’m not so interested in being influenced by other films when making my films,” he explains. “I try to get my influence through music and art and other stuff. For this film, I studied a lot of Renaissance painters for the light and colour, and the very special spooky feelings that can be in certain artists’ pictures.”

In particular, he cites Hans Holbein, “an old Flemish or Dutch painter from the 1500s who was painting a lot for the British court. His most famous painting is called ‘The Ambassadors.’ But he made some really spooky portraits of children, women and men. It could be people you met two days ago in the suburbs, but in the clothes of that time. They have a very high authenticity, but you can feel the artist in those pictures. [The subjects] have very strange angles in their eyes, which I also used in this film.”

SWEDE MEMORIES

The film is given further visual power by taking place in a snowy winter, a very deliberate decision on Alfredson’s part. “Obviously for you Canadians too, winter is a special environment to live in, because it lacks so much life,” he explains. “It’s very beautiful, and it’s interesting to have this creature who depends on darkness. It would be a very good place for a vampire to work in (laughs)—a wintery, dark place. In February in Sweden, it’s very hard to understand why people came here in the first place. Everything is very artificial—lighting, heat, food is imported. So that also gives a certain tone to it.”

The film is set in the early eighties, although this is only suggested in a few subtle details—“I didn’t want it to lean on nostalgia, because it’s too cheap to make easy points on nostalgic details,” Alfredson explains. “Sweden was one of the few countries that didn’t go to World War II, so we were very rich after. We had a lot of money to build these strange suburbs. It has some social democratic idea behind it. The story is set in 1982, which is also a very interesting period of time… Sweden was sort of halfway behind the Iron Curtain in those days. For us, this ambience is very special. It was a much more silent society.”

The oppressive winter atmosphere, the unexpressive social mores and the difficulties of pre-adolescence all contribute to Hedebrant’s heart-wrenching aura of isolation. Both he and Leandersson are perfectly cast, capturing pre-teen angst with appropriately creepy undertones. “Those two children are really strange and fantastic. They have a really high sense of integrity,” Alfredson agrees.

The casting coup wasn’t easy, he explains: “In Sweden we don’t have professional children actors, so every time you need a child, you have to go and find them. So we looked for over a year, and it was one of the toughest parts of the production.” However, once the young actors were in place, things went smoothly. “I’m pretty used to working with children—I’ve been doing that for 15 years in several projects,” Alfredson shrugs. “I’m the kind of guy who children immediately look at. I’m a children’s magnet, I don’t know why (laughs). It’s very easy for me to make a connection with them.”

The protagonists’ age—at 12, they’re starting to feel hormonal stirrings, but still quite clearly children—gives much of the violence (and romance) an uncomfortable angle. But to anyone who remembers that painful stage of life, the vampire motif is an apt metaphor for a young outsider’s fantasies. “There are a lot of points in the story that are very ambiguous, and it’s up to the audience to decide what happened,” says Alfredson. “The ending is quite controversial, and it’s tricky. I’m not so fond of telling the audience what they should think of the film. It’s very complicated. That’s also my intention, that this should be a matter of discussion. I have my point of view on this, but I don’t see the point of me telling that.”

Whether in spite or because of this ambiguity, the film has been a success on the international festival circuit, including this year’s Fantasia, and broke through to audiences beyond the horror fanbase. According to Alfredson, this wider appeal was already in place with Lindqvist’s novel. “It has reached a very unusual audience in Sweden, and over the world too, in the sense that a lot of women read it—because, in Sweden anyway, horror or vampire stories aren’t usually read by women,” Alfredson notes. “It has been read by people from 16 to 60. So you couldn’t really say what kind of target group it has.”

Lindqvist’s poignant story is well served by Alfredson’s knack for working with kids and his austere cinematic style, making the film a cut above the horror heap. In this case at least, hiring a non-horror director to helm a vampire flick was a good call—because when it comes to genre, Alfredson says, “It doesn’t really matter to me, as long as the heart is in the right place.”