TWILIGHT
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke; written by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer; director of photography, Elliot Davis; edited by Nancy Richardson; music by Carter Bruwell produced by Greg Mooradian, Mark Morgan and Wyck Godfrey; released by Summit Entertainment. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute.
WITH: Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan), Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen), Billy Burke (Charlie Swan), Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen), Nikki Reed (Rosalie Cullen), Jackson Rathbone (Jasper Cullen), Kellan Lutz (Emmett Cullen), Peter Facinelli (Dr. Carlisle Cullen), Cam Gigandet (James/Nomad Vampire), Taylor Lautner (Jacob), Anna Kendrick (Jessica), Michael Welch (Mike Newton) and Justin Chon (Eric).t’s love at first look instead of first bite in “Twilight,” a deeply sincere, outright goofy vampire romance for the hot-not-to-trot abstinence set. Based on the foundational book in Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling multivolume series, “The Twilight Saga” (four doorstops and counting), this carefully faithful adaptation traces the sighs and whispers, the shy glances and furious glares of two unlikely teenage lovers who fall into each other’s pale, pale arms amid swirling hormones, raging instincts, high school dramas and oh-so-confusing feelings, like, OMG he’s SO HOT!! Does he like ME?? Will he KILL me??? I don’t CARE!!! :)
And, reader, she doesn’t, the she being Bella (for Isabella) Swan, played with tremulous intensity and a slight snarl by Kristen Stewart. A sylph with a watchful, sometimes wary gaze who’s often cast in daughter roles, Ms. Stewart transformed from an appealing actress into something more complex with her brief, memorable turn in the 2007 movie of Jon Krakauer’s book “Into the Wild.” As the child-woman whose longing for the ill-fated wanderer Christopher McCandless is largely expressed through piercing looks and sensitive strumming, Ms. Stewart gave form and feeling to the possibility that the search for freedom and authentic experiences can be found in the embrace of another human being. This was a girl worth living for, if not for that film’s lost soul.
Since living really isn’t an option for Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the moody, darkly brooding vampire who catches Bella’s eye and then her heart, she becomes the girl worth fighting for, a battle that, as in the book, involves not just malignant forces, but also ravenous appetite. Like all vampire stories, “Twilight” is about repressed desire and untamed hunger and the possibility of blood, the blood that flows from violently pierced necks and that, from John Polidori’s 1819 short novel “The Vampyre” to Alan Ball’s new HBO series, “True Blood,” represents ravishment of a more graphic kind. This is the ravishment that, in its pantomime of seduction and surrender, transforms innocence — like that of Bram Stoker’s sacrificial virgin, Lucy, in “Dracula” — into “voluptuous wantonness.”
