TWI-LIGHT…-headedness
TWILIGHT – finally seen it, the prepubescent frankenstein’s monster of hotness and multi-fanged giggles! Now, this is not for the cynical-minded: it’s a self-indulgent movie which doesn’t care about piling on layers of meaning, not nearly as much as about raking in dough from starry-eyed escapists/virgins. It’s not reinventing the undead-cum-mortal-love wheel. It’s not knee-deep in existential dialogue. It’s not even off-the-charts sensual.
And still, it melted the criticism right out of this critic – ‘cuz what it DOES manage to pull off is steam galore! It’s oozing everywhere, it literally takes your breath away and hangs on to it for seconds on end. You get the full, dizzyingly-obvious treatment, blow by blow: cue chilling music, slow motion camerawork, close-ups on broody eyes, furrowed brows and a lopsided grin – and, then, exhale, shaking with bouts of cackly laughter under your breath, the redness climbing in your cheeks like wine going to your head.
And it’s not just the credit of Edward and Bella’s chemistry, it’s also about the cuteness of high-school awkwardness, bubbling up nostalgia in your veins. The teen card is played by Hardwicke till sapped of all credibility, whereupon she shoots up adrenaline into the deck, keeping the viewers going on and on, running on empty like headless Pavlovian doggies. The special effects are shoestring compared to Hollywood’s CGI standards, but low-key is what the movie exudes throughout, so they fit in just right: you’d be hard-pressed to find fault with the vampires’ speedy gymnastics, when the view from atop soaring trees, that it eventually affords, floors your jawline.
Having said all this, Twilight is Pattinson and Stewart’s movie without a doubt: they’re king and queen of the playground, showing promising acting chops and riveting class, a head above their peers in the bizz. She steals the thunder, the limelight, the grey-light and any other light trained on anyone else – believable as a not-so-much-socially-cool-as-naturally-hot teen, she keeps her own counsel, only to speak her mind a minute later, and you can actually SEE the wheels turning in her head. It goes without saying that the women involved in shaping her (writer Meyer and director Hardwicke) endowed her with a unique sort of feminist spine and independent thought – which Kristen carries off nicely.
As far as he’s concerned, Edward makes the angst-ridden, dark vampire schtick his own, as much as possible under the strain of a tightly-woven screenplay and a laundry list of fans’ expectations. Robert hangs a smile in the corner of his lips with the carelessness of one who’s been around the (school-)block a few hundred times and fills the shoes of a heartthrob with ease. Yes, he’s got that pesky blood thirst hanging over him, the one which has vampire impersonators these days being all self-flagellating and weepy. BUT his teen take on vampirism is equal parts Louis and Lestat – however unrealistic as that may sound. In the end, what one decides to judge Twilight on is down to the beholder’s mood on the uptake: will you be dazzled by the sweeping romance or get bogged down in technicalities like true-to-life-ness? I (and Simo) chose the former and loved every minute of that choice 
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