----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dianne L. Brooks solicited reviews of Interview with the Vampire. I have to say that I'm with Janet Maislin on this. I thought the film was very nicely done -- not only for the art direction, which was, imho, spectacular -- but for it's characterizations and its tone. Perhaps too much was made of the difficulty Cruise would have in portraying Lestat. I thought he did the character more than due justice. The criticism of his performance derives more, I suspect, from dissatisfaction with the actor's off-screen persona or on-screen stereotype than from his personification of the vampire brat that Louis saw Lestat to be. The novel's homoerotic subtext -- which I think is better characterized as panerotic -- is not lost in the film. In fact, in the film it hovers somewhere on the boundary between text and subtext -- more patent than the novel makes it -- less so perhaps than the reader might assimilate. It is important to keep in mind, I think, that, at least in part, the novel/film substitutes bloodlust for lust. Louis is uncomfortable with both -- as is Lestat -- uninitiated as he is. The eroticism between them grows of need and desire that neither quite understands. It is perfectly fitting for Cruise as Lestat to be less than easy with this natural sensuality. And though I don't find Pitt to be particularly appealing either, I thought the scenes between them sizzled with the tension of misapprehensions of lust. (Contrast this with Armand's character -- whose ease with the pansexual is grounded -- we will learn -- in extensive rites of passage. He knows because he has been initiated.) There's more to be said, but I'll leave it at this for the time being :). Shari ([log in to unmask])