Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In)

Two 12-year-olds meet one evening in the courtyard outside the apartment block where they live. He is Oskar, a sad and lonely little boy who is constantly bullied at school and has a scrapbook full of stories about murders that he’s cut from the newspaper. She is Eli, the new girl next door. She advises him on how to deal with the bullies and tells him that if standing up to them doesn’t work, she'll help him herself.



They are two misfits drawn to each other and you perhaps expect a typical ‘coming of age’ movie as Oskar's fascination with her, develops into a full blown crush but all is not what it seems with Eli. We are in Stockholm in the middle of winter but Eli is not wearing a coat or shoes even though there’s snow on the ground. She also smells real bad and all the windows to her flat have been covered with cardboard to block out the light. Her ‘Dad’ goes out at night stringing people up by their feet, slitting their throats and draining their blood into a bottle that he takes home for Eli. She may be 12 but she tells Oskar she’s been 12 for a very long time. Yep it’s the same old story, boy meet vampire and falls in love.

So it’s a horror movie but it isn’t. It’s like no other vampire movie that I’ve seen before. It is at times quite horrific but the film doesn’t rely upon cheap scenes of gore and unlike most horror movies, it has a plot. The main element of which is the close friendship between Oscar and Eli.

Her ‘Dad’ is not very good at the blood gathering lark and after one particular botched attempt, knowing that he is about to be found out, he pours acid on his face so that he can't be identified. When he is taken to the hospital, Eli climbs up to his room where she feasts on him before he falls to his death through the open window.

Her ‘gatherer’ gone, Eli goes to Oskar’s apartment and knocks on his window, asking to be let him. A vampire can only enter a home when they are invited in. It is good to see that throughout the film, the ‘vampire rules’ are upheld.



They spend that night together and Oskar asks her whether she'd like to go steady with him. Even though Eli tells him that she’s ‘not a girl’, he isn’t deterred, boys never are, so they go steady anyway. Oskar cuts his own palm to seal their new found status in blood but she falls to the floor and begins to drink up the blood. Oskar, smart boy that he is, suddenly sees her for what she is but still they go steady.

When Eli attacks a woman but the woman is rescued, all it does is condemn her to become a vampire too. She is viciously attacked by her friend’s cats and develops an aversion to light. She knows something is badly wrong and doesn't want to live. When her doctor open the blinds to her room she impressively combusts. A great moment.



Almost as good is the closing swimming pool scene where the elder brother of the bully, who Oskar finally fought back against, intends to dish out some retribution but he gets much more than he bargained for as Eli holds good her offer to come to Oskar’s aid. A loving gesture... perhaps, if such brutality be seen as an act of love.

At the end, as our two young ‘lovers’ elope together, we are left to ponder the future. Oskar may have escaped the bullies but what has he traded this for? Is he simply stepping into the shoes of her ‘Dad’? Is this how she works? Seduce a young boy to help her survive until he has grown old and outlived his usefulness, at which point she can replace him with a younger model... hmmm sounds familiar, but I digress. All the way thorough the film is played as a romance but the end is, when you think about it, simply chilling.

‘Let the Right One In’ is a great film that leaves you both repulsed and fascinated at the same time and asks, among other things, whether good and evil can coexist in the same person.

Hollywood, of course, has seen the money making potential here and will remake this film next year, without the subtitles. Presumably also with a lower certificate to make even more money and presumably with a lot of the darkness and especially the sexual undertones removed, so as not to offend anyone. Of course they’ll also have to add a happy ending and I for one, hate happy endings. Avoid like the plague, see this instead.

Damned United

Our film choice tonight is the 'Damned United' which is supposedly about Brian Clough's infamous 44 days in charge at Leeds United in 1974 but actually turns out to be more about his time at Derby County. This certainly endears it to me. Perhaps they had to cut all the Leeds stuff out after all the lawsuits that have been mooted. The film is based on the book by David Peace, which is a mixture of the facts and his own ideas of what might have been going on behind the scenes.

I had quite a few reservations about going to see it. They said a lot of it was made up and they portrayed Clough in a bad light but I disagree. The Derby side of the story was mostly accurate and I though Clough came out of it pretty favourably. There was only one scene of him drinking, they hardly portrayed him as a drunk, as apparently the book did.

Michael Sheen plays Clough, he who did Tony Blair in The Queen, so at first it's a little difficult to take him seriously but he is actually rather good as Cloughie, delivering all those famous Clough quotes.



Don Revie (well played by Colm Meaney) was once Clough's idol but the reason he grew to hate Revie was apparently because he did not shake his hand when Leeds came to Derby and beat them in the FA Cup Third Round in 1968.

The film flicks backwards and forwards between his brief time at Leeds and his much longer spell at Derby but there is a helpful graphic that rolls the years backwards and forwards so that flashback averse folk like me can keep up. The film uses a lot of archive footage, to which they cleverly superimposed the actors from the film over their real life equivalents.

The 1970's football scene is captured well and the stadiums recreated in all their dilapidated glory. Not sure Derby's Baseball Ground was ever quite that ramshackle but it was a good effort. Did 1970's dressing rooms really have ashtrays for each player? It was an age when many tackles were actually cases of GBH of which Leeds were (allegedly) the masters but they were also a very good side, as two championships show. Although it's hard to believe that when you look at the physical state of some of the actors chosen to play the Leeds players. Many of them seemed too old; Bremner and Clarke wouldn’t see 40 again. Others though were good likenesses.



If anything, it would have been nice to have had more of the Leeds side of the story. The players were described as Revie's surrogate sons but little was shown of the Don Revie era, so we don't really get a feel for that.



Yes, there were inaccuracies and also some stuff surprisingly left out. No mention was made of the fact that the teams met again in 1968 in the League Cup Semi-Final as Clough started to weave his magic at Derby. Although Leeds won both legs, Clough's revenge did actually came much quicker than in the film, as Derby beat Leeds 4-1 in their first home game against them after being promoted in 1969. The 2-1 win in the film never happened and the 5-0 drubbing that was highlighted actually came much later in the 1972-73 season after Derby were crowned champions.
In fact little is made of Derby pipping Leeds to the title that year, you'd have thought Clough would have crowed a bit about that particular victory.

Jim Broadbent is excellent as Sam Longson, Derby's chairman and Clough leaves Derby when 'Uncle' Sam takes seriously his resignation attempt. In truth Longson is glad to be shut of him. Clough's assistant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) persuades him to take over at lowly Brighton and the sequence of events was changed here too. I've no idea why. Clough and Taylor were actually in charge at Brighton for 32 games and not as the film implied, that Clough left before he even started work there. They could have included some of their time at Brighton and he also didn't go back after he left Leeds.



The film suggests that he took the Leeds job because he wanted to eclipse Revie's achievements there. Not that it works out that way at Leeds. He upset all the players from day one when he told them to throw all their medals in the bin because they hadn't won anyone of them fairly. He never got the dressing room back after that and was dismissed after seven games.

He got the last laugh in the end and did pretty well at Nottingham Forest, whilst Revie failed as England manager and was then charged with bringing the game into disrepute when he left to manage the UAE.

The film is less of a film, more of an interesting history lesson and despite the inaccuracies, it's a good one. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Woody Allen has always been a taste that I've never quite acquired but tonight we go see 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona', his latest 'return to form'. Don't they say that every time? It's basically another of his films about relationships.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are spending the summer in Barcelona. Vicky is there to study and at the end of the summer she is committed to marrying Doug, probably the safest man in the Northern Hemisphere. Cristina meanwhile is committed to nothing and only knows what she doesn't want, rather than what she does. They are two girls with differing views on a lot of things but especially on the subject of love and relationships.

They meet a divorced painter called Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who propositions them. He invites them to spend a weekend with him in Oviedo, where they will sightsee, drink wine, and, he hopes, make love. Cristina being the adventurous type and intrigued by Juan Antonio, who is rumoured to have a violent marriage behind him, accepts at once. Vicky is the opposite, straight-laced, conventional, and cautious. She is appalled at the very idea and refuses but reluctantly comes along to keep Cristina company.



Juan Antonio is as good as his word. He takes them sightseeing, plies them with wine, and invites both girls to his room. Vicky still declines and although Cristina tries to play hard to get, she isn't very good at it. Then just when they are about to get it on (or off, if you prefer) Cristina develops an ulcer and is too ill for any passion.



So for the rest of the weekend Vicky has to take up the baton and go sightseeing with Juan Antonio but of course without the passion. Cue yet more wine and when Juan Antonio discovers that she has a weakness for the romantic sound of the Spanish guitar, you just know where it's going to end up. After a guitar concert in the park, Vicky succumbs to his charms. This is where the film lost me. It just seemed so out of character for staid old Vicky to give in so easily and after so little effort from Juan Antonio or perhaps all women that easily swayed, if you strum the right strings.



When they return to Barcelona, Vicky reverts to type and keeps quiet about queue jumping her friend, so Juan Antonio returns to plan A and the much easier to seduce Cristina. Glad of a second chance, Cristina wastes no time jumping into his bed and then moves into his house. Sorted. Until the ex-wife appears.

The ex-wife, Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), has attempted suicide and Juan Antonio lets her move back in with him... and Cristina. Cristina seems to not be bothered about this.

Now things get a bit crazy, Maria Elena completely rewrites the situation by suggesting that Cristina was in fact the missing link in her marriage. Cue the three indulging in sexual tryst. Cristina confesses all to Vicky, who seems secretly jealous of her friend, stuck as she is with boring old Doug who she has now married after he came out to Barcelona.



All though is not well in the love triangle for Cristina and she moves out, cue another bust up between Juan Antonio and Maria Elena. Oh well thinks Juan Antonio back to Plan B and invites Vicky to his home for lunch. Just as she is about to allow herself to be ravished again in walks a gun toting Maria Elena. Vicky is shot in the hand and in the process finally gets over her Spanish lover boy.

So Vicky goes back to dull Doug and Cristina is still Cristina not knowing what she wants. They all end up back where they began.

Odd fare. A film with many unexpected but never very gripping plot twists. It was an implausible story about some pretty uninteresting characters and I think that was the problem. The acting was decent, though I can't work out whether Scarlett Johansson is a good actress playing a dumb blonde or a dumb blonde playing a dumb blonde.