Lesbian Vampires in The Moth Diaries: Fangs for the Mammaries

Mary Harron's new scarefest offers Sapphic longing but not enough sex and blood

Year: 2011

Director: Mary Harron

Studio: IFC Films

Actors: Sarah Bolger, Sarah Gadon, Lily Cole

As the hunky new teacher (Scott Speedman) tells his students at a cloistered girls high school, every vampire story shares three elements: sex, blood and death. The first two items come up short in screenwriter-director Mary Harrons oddly anodyne adaptation of the Rachel Klein novel. Im a very deep sleeper, says The Moth Diairies teen vampire; but its the movie itself thats unduly slumberous.

Rebecca (Sarah Bolger), a sensitive girl wracked by her poet-fathers recent suicide, believes that the life of her BFF Lucie (Sarah Gadon) is getting vampirically sucked out by the black-clad English exchange student Ernessa (Lily Cole). Is Rebecca onto something, or is her private tragedy, mixed with her jealousy over losing Lucie to Ernessa, summoning the demons in her own mind? Could Rebecca be just another teen who takes literature too literally, transferring Lucy in Bram Stokers Dracula novel one of the vampires most succulent victims into her own friend Lucie? Thats the central issue of Kleins book; but Harron soft-pedals the hallucination angle in favor of a standard reprise of repressed teen libidos and creatures of the night.

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Lesbian vampires have long haunted the B-level horror genre, especially in the 70s with such fangs-for-the-mammaries temptations as Roy Ward Bakers The Vampire Lovers, Harry Kmels Daughters of Darkness and Jos Larrazs Vampyres. Setting such a tale in a girls school seems like inspiration: the early teen years, when a girls body may bloom before her mind can deciper the changes, and when friendships and love affairs both have volcanic impact, are a perfect age for a blend of fears and fantasies. It might point The Moth Diaries toward the killer comedy of Heathers, the unleashed predatory unisexuality of Jennifers Body.

Harron (who fun fact dated Tony Blair back in the 70s) ought to be up to the challenge: she surely did right by American Psychoa decade ago, casting Christian Bale as the Yuppie serial killer in her adaptation of Bret Easton Elliss darkly comic novel. HarronsI Shot Andy Warhol, withMad Mens Jared Harris as the artist and Lili Taylor as his would-be assassin Valerie Solanas, also had a roguish intelligence and a gift for x-raying the emotions of a troubled young woman.

Originally posted here:
Lesbian Vampires in The Moth Diaries: Fangs for the Mammaries

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero