Review #1,101: 'The Hunger' (1983)

Before he was pumping out heavily stylised action films such as Top Gun (1986), True Romance (1993) and Enemy of the State (1999), the late Tony Scott cut his cinematic teeth on more thoughtful fare such as the slender Loving Memory (1971) and the melancholic The Hunger, the latter a surprisingly sad meditation on love, lust and the destructive nature of age, both mentally and physically. Essentially a vampire movie with little horror, The Hunger is Scott at his most subdued, portraying the tragic end of one long-term companionship and the beginnings of a new one.

Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie) are vampires living a life of solitude, emerging occasionally to feed and giving weekly violin lessons to a young girl named Alice (Beth Ehlers). When John wakes up one morning with signs of physical decay, he approaches Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), a gerontologist studying rapid ageing in primates in the hope of finding a way to reverse it. Sarah thinks he is a quack and leaves him in the waiting room for much longer than promised, during which John ages decades and flees as his body betrays him. Remorseful, Sarah seeks John out but instead finds Miriam, who instantly strikes up an attraction with the beautiful doctor.

Although he was criticised throughout his career for favouring style over substance with sickly action movies like Spy Game (2001) and Domino (2005), this approach works well for The Hunger. There's a distinct coldness to the aesthetic, like death is all over, and despite the film being very much a product of the 80s, it's aged remarkably well. The absorbing visuals do come at the expense of coherency however, and you are left trying to fill in most of the blanks yourself, with many things left unexplained. The lingering question of just why Miriam seems to be the only true immortal and an ending that had me scratching my head left me frustrated. But if you just go with it, The Hunger is at times moving and beautiful, refusing to give in to traditional vampire mythos in favour of telling its own unique, if flawed, tale.


Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, Cliff De Young
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie