I arrived to the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema around 10:40am (the movie time was 12:15pm). I intended to arrive earlier, but I underestimated the distance. For some reason I thought it is an intersection with Yonge. Go me.
I got into the rush line. It was pretty short compared to the lines for The Fifth Estate and 12 Years A Slave. It was pretty quiet. Maybe because it was raining quite a bit.
At 12pm the line was not moving. And nobody was telling us how many people are ahead or how many tickets there might be. Compared to other screenings I went to, the volunteers here were few and not very talkative. Maybe it was the rain.
At 12:10pm the line moved a bit. Then a bit. It was moving very slowly. At 12:20pm somebody said that the movie had started (which doesn’t make sense because they wouldn’t be keeping people in the line then). Then 5 minutes later somebody said that they were going to start shortly.
There were few people ahead of me, when we heard that they would let 5 more people inside (they were letting in people in fives) and that was it.
I was lucky to be that 5th person in the line.
I got inside the theater when the movie was on already, but barely missed anything. I think they let in another 5 people after me, because I saw more people coming in later. But it was definitely not the whole rush line (compared to two other galas). And this was not even a premiere! I think there were about 30 people ahead of me in the line. So I estimate that there were about 40 rush tickets sold.
But I can only guess, since nobody told us how many people were in the line.
The movie was a visual and musical delight. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton played vampires, a married couple, Adam and Eve. They were beautiful in their Yin/Yang harmony, a pair of glamoury and artistic hippies with fangs. The story is quite simple. It is less of a story and more of a painting, where you want to watch every detail for hours. Mia Wasikowska was Ava, Eve’s younger sister. She was adorable. John Hurt played an old vampire (hinted to be Shakespeare himself).
It was an odd but pretty movie, a very soft one, with no sex, no biting, no violence. It was so different from any other vampire movie that I have seen that I want to give Jim Jarmusch an Oscar only for creating his own folklore about vampires.
Acting was brilliant. It looked as if Tom and Tilda were not playing vampires, but rather themselves, being as deep, thoughtful, intelligent and lithe as they are in real life.
There was only one scene in which both of them were naked (nothing graphic though) - both of them are so thin! And Tilda is over 50! And she looks amazing!