The Hunger (1983)

Tony Scott's first feature arrives dressed for a party it never quite attends. The camera prowls, the ankh blades glint, Bauhaus intone the obvious, and somewhere in the middle of it all Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon share a scene that has kept the film in circulation for four decades. The relationship at the center is explicitly bisexual, and the film treats it without apology, though its sensibilities belong to 1983 erotic horror, where the sapphic encounter was a fixture of the genre's economics. We note the mileage without awarding a modern badge.

The rest of the ledger is quiet. Miriam is a commanding female figure and Sarah is a working scientist with a lab and a grant, yet the film has no interest in arguing about either. It wants blood, cellos, and the slow horror of a body that will not stop decaying. Aging here is a monster, not a talking point, and the film has the good manners to leave its metaphors unspoken. The wealthy townhouse is decadent rather than indictable, the ancient Egypt interludes are scenery rather than revision, and no character pauses to explain what the audience should feel. David Bowie spends the middle act turning to dust in a doctor's waiting room, which is more than most films manage in two hours.

The verdict is a strange one. This is a vampire picture that mistakes atmosphere for narrative and has been justly scolded for it, yet its restraint reads as refinement now. It never preaches, never diversifies a cast for appearances, never converts its central relationship into a seminar. The final balcony shot, famously imposed by the studio, remains incoherent. We are inclined to forgive it.