 |
|
|
|
|
Film Review by John Demetry
Adapting goth trash author Anne Rice's novel, director Michael Rymer develops a toothless satire of the goth rock scene. Still, it's preferable to Neil Jordan's faithful adaptation of Rice's undead-on-arrival script for Interview with the Vampire. Rymer's best intentional joke is on Rice fans. Rice's eternally tortured protagonist, Lestat (here played by Stuart Townsend), awakens in the modern era to embark on a career as a Marilyn-Manson-style rock star with a vampire gimmick. As quintessential goth geek Jesse Reeves, Marguerite Moreau is an inexpressive zombie actress. My favorite Manson and Rice-bashing joke: Jesse -- with Moreau's somnolent delivery - tells Lestat that his journal "touched" her. The love story between Jesse and Lestat - the classic fan's fantasy - establishes the context that Aaliyah reduces to ashes.
At best, Rymer succumbs to Aaliyah like a dutiful fan. Sauntering across the screen - with a weightless, timeless physical expressiveness -- Aaliyah rocks the pop boat. All eyes are on Aaliyah -- including those of a butch goth vampiress. Aaliyah's sensual appeal transcends gender and race. Her camp pleasure in performance even extends to gay male adoration. Aaliyah humanizes camp by making it genuinely erotic. The giddy image of Aaliyah biting Townsend's chest in a rose-pedal bath rewrites the history of glam-to-goth album covers. Later, Aaliyah strikes a post-coital glamour pose appropriate for the liner notes of her self-titled final album. Her command of the screen - after her character's centuries-long encasement in (white) alabaster, after a century of alabaster Hollywood cinema -- feels liberating. Digital distortion takes away Aaliyah's voice while spiking up the goth-awfulness of such lines as: "I know you crave to have the world at your feet." Yet, when Aaliyah seductively lifts her head and sticks out her full lips, the world really is at her feet. I don't think Moreau and Aaliyah ever appear on-screen together. (If they do, you wouldn't notice Moreau anyway.) Aaliyah delivers a stare-down directed at Moreau, off-screen. It's a fangs-exposed, "U Got Nerve" maneuver. It's also terrific movie acting. Aaliyah is Queen of the Screen. Try as he might, Rymer cannot contain what Aaliyah brings to the movie: an extension of her romantic songs' complication of the eternal romance between audience and pop artist. By expressing the liberating potential in a pop star's relationship to her audience, Aaliyah puts a stake through the heart of Rymer's satire. In "I Refuse," one of the best tracks on her final album, Aaliyah calls forth gospel-impulse, girl-power support to get rid of the bad man in her life. The song overlaps Aaliyah's vocals -- one defiant, the other pained. That reveals a romantic neuroticism, the depths to which Aaliyah digs for strength to overcome.
Audience response to Aaliyah's performance in Queen of the Damned reveals and challenges pop culture's deep-rooted racial-sexual neuroticism. Lestat tells his former master, Marius, that he didn't miss much sleeping through the '50s. "Well, Elvis," Marius replies. That response forgets the way Little Richard drove the nation into a tizzy by eliciting swoons from white girls -- and white boys. This racial-sexual ambivalence pokes through the plot holes of Rymer's clumsy direction. Follow Aaliyah's advice: "Read Between the Lines."
In the song "What If," Aaliyah turns the tables on a jealous lover. Here, Aaliyah's performance turns the tables on pop culture's bloodsucking racism -- what should have been the source of Rymer's satire. She marks the human, vital loss in the American primal image of her transformation into a digital swirl of black ash. Aaliyah sang pop's hidden horrors best: "We Need a Resolution." Without resolution, the pop audience is truly damned. |
Aaliyah, who died shortly after the filming of this movie, plays Akasha, Queen of the Damned 
Stuart Townsend and Aaliyah 
© 1997-2002 BEI