What Only Lovers Left Alive taught me about queer love

Dur­ing the sum­mer I was 17, I watched a lot of movies and had an exis­ten­tial cri­sis. I had just grad­u­at­ed high school, where I was the per­fect stu­dent who had achieved the high­est pos­si­ble score for my final exams, but I had always known that I could nev­er tru­ly fit into my school’s and society’s expec­ta­tions of per­fec­tion, because I was gay. I was edu­cat­ed to believe that queer­ness was shame­ful and wrong, and so I buried this knowl­edge as deeply as I could by dis­tract­ing myself with aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess. But now, no one cared about how many A+s I had scored and I could no longer hide from myself. It was dur­ing this unmoored sum­mer that I first came across Only Lovers Left Alive.

As I grap­pled with my sex­u­al­i­ty, Jim Jarmusch’s tale of Adam (Tom Hid­dle­ston) and Eve (Til­da Swin­ton) – two well-read, musi­cal vam­pires who have been eter­nal­ly in love – spoke to me. This sto­ry of their love tri­umph­ing against the odds, and the iso­la­tion that they expe­ri­ence over hun­dreds of years, felt intense­ly relat­able to my expe­ri­ence as a queer woman.

Con­cep­tu­al­is­ing Only Lovers Left Alive as a queer film might seem bizarre. Adam and Eve are so straight that they are named after the first het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ple. But it’s not that sim­ple. Being ​“queer” – to elude even the stricter labels with­in the LGBTQIA+ com­mu­ni­ty – exem­pli­fies what it means to exist in the blur­ri­est spaces out­side het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty. Adam and Eve might appear to be male and female, but they cer­tain­ly aren’t het­ero­nor­ma­tive. They are immor­tal, androg­y­nous vam­pires who aren’t even human, let alone capa­ble of sub­scrib­ing to sex­u­al and gen­der bina­ries. Their rela­tion­ship evades the roles and nar­ra­tives dic­tat­ed by tra­di­tion­al social norms, and is an act of resis­tance against their world.

At its begin­ning, Only Lovers Left Alive char­ac­teris­es being in love as a very iso­lat­ing, bleak expe­ri­ence. Adam and Eve are not just phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed – in Detroit and Tang­i­er, respec­tive­ly – but they are dis­placed from the human world they float through. Both Adam’s and Eve’s apart­ments are silent and dark with­out each oth­er, board­ed up with clut­tered books and sep­a­rat­ed from the rest of soci­ety by thick cur­tains and rick­ety stair­cas­es. The only way that the cou­ple are able to con­nect with each oth­er is through video calls, where they are each con­fined to tiny, glitch­ing screens and are dwarfed by the sprawl­ing empti­ness of their phys­i­cal lives. Their inabil­i­ty to sur­vive in day­light hours entraps them with­in their domes­tic realms. Even when they enter the out­side world at night, they are forced to con­ceal their bod­ies and to steal and traf­fic nec­es­sary sup­plies, con­not­ing their lives with shame and deny­ing them the free­dom they desire.

At 17, I too felt that my love was lone­ly and shame­ful. In high school, it was made clear to me that I was not allowed to expe­ri­ence life like my het­ero­sex­u­al peers. I was taught in Reli­gion and Sex Edu­ca­tion – and even Sci­ence class­es – that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a sin, and every­one around me threw ​“gay”, in its deroga­to­ry pejo­ra­tive, around as fre­quent­ly as they might say ​“stu­pid”. Just like Adam, who becomes deeply depressed in reac­tion to his iso­la­tion, my entrap­ment with­in a homo­pho­bic world huge­ly affect­ed my own men­tal health. Adam and Eve’s inabil­i­ty to live hon­est, free lives togeth­er, and their ostracism from soci­ety, rep­re­sent­ed exact­ly how I had been made to feel. Their expe­ri­ences val­i­dat­ed my own lone­li­ness in a way that no one in my real life had ever been able to.

But, Adam and Eve’s love also brings them immense joy. In my favourite scene in the film, after their reunion, they dance to ​‘Trapped By a Thing Called Love’ by Denise DeSalle. At that moment, noth­ing else mat­ters to them. They gen­tly inter­lace their fin­gers, twirl against each oth­ers’ bod­ies, and soft­ly smile at one anoth­er. The cam­era breaks its pre­vi­ous­ly reserved pres­ence and floats above their bod­ies, cen­ter­ing their tran­scen­dent hap­pi­ness. The small joy of shar­ing inti­ma­cy is, to them, so much more than a sweet moment — it is deeply heal­ing, resist­ing the joy­less­ness of their lone­ly existences.

Before they dance, Eve tells Adam, ​“You’ve been lucky in love.” This is the film’s biggest under­state­ment. Shar­ing the world with one anoth­er brings both Adam and Eve the hope that their iso­la­tion is devoid of – and it is this hope that under­lies their stub­born insis­tence at over­com­ing every­thing, sim­ply to be together.

When I watch these scenes now, Adam and Eve rep­re­sent the queer spir­it to me. Through­out his­to­ry, queer peo­ple have fought for the free­dom to express their iden­ti­ties with pride and hope. Con­nec­tion, com­mu­ni­ty, and the sim­ple right to exist authen­ti­cal­ly and hap­pi­ly have been (and, in many cas­es, still are) a rad­i­cal form of resis­tance in a world where queer­ness has been met with vio­lent oppres­sion. Adam and Eve, sim­i­lar­ly, exist in a soci­ety that is hos­tile to their iden­ti­ties, and where access to their sup­plies and com­mu­ni­ty is pre­car­i­ous at best. To not only sur­vive, but to love, exem­pli­fies this same resis­tance. Watch­ing them enact this inspires me to uphold my own queer pride.

But, as a 17-year-old, what Adam and Eve’s joy pro­vid­ed me with was much sim­pler – a flick­er of opti­mism that I had nev­er real­ly felt before. It empow­ered me to con­sid­er that, maybe, I would not be des­tined to the life of secre­cy and self-hatred I envis­aged for myself – that, some­day, as I learned to embrace myself, some­one would dance with me too, and that I would expe­ri­ence a love like Adam and Eve’s. It made me realise that the prej­u­dice I expe­ri­enced could not stop me from attain­ing the joy I craved.

The last time I watched Only Lovers Left Alive was six months ago, sev­er­al years out from that sum­mer. I held hands with my part­ner as we watched it togeth­er, both of us as enrap­tured by it as I was as a teenag­er. But it doesn’t res­onate with my lone­li­ness any­more. Now, Adam and Eve cel­e­brate what queer love means to me, as a proud les­bian in love with anoth­er woman: some­thing beau­ti­ful and unde­fin­able and unquash­able, and the most impor­tant thing in my world.