Let The Right One In

         When introduced to Elie, I felt sympathy towards her overall. The sympathy left quickly every time she killed someone, or her caretaker did so on her behalf, but it always returned when I saw her in her more normal, calm form. The film is meant to set us up to feel sympathy for her. Her character starts this setup: she’s pale, she’s thin, she looks almost sickly, her bright bulging eyes speak to the fear she is living in, her lips are always dry and cracked and her hair is rather messy. The first time we see her, she is sitting barefoot on a jungle gym in her thin clothes, almost pajamas in the snow, she truly looks like an orphan. Balancing her with Oskar, whose emotional makeup is much like her external makeup (the fear, the neglect in his own life, etc.) but who on the outside appears to be just a normal kid.

Here we see Elie's pale skin, cracked lips, bulging eyes, etc. This clip is where she looks the most sickly, and it sets our expectation for her for the rest of the film.

To touch on their relationship, what person can’t relate to Elie isolating herself from Oskar, yet eventually succumb to her feelings? I think that their relationship is mutually supportive and loving. Had their been any hint that perhaps her previous caretaker “owed her”, I would’ve been far more suspicious that she had every intention of simply using Oskar. However, she offers to help him, and saves his life in the end, and that’s what makes me think she has a true sense of caring for him. Its not nearly as complex to decipher where Oskar stands with Elie. He is truly attracted to her and he truly cares about her, one can see it in his mannerisms around her.

In this clip, Oskar is purposefully, intently listening to whatever message Elie is sending, and carefully tapping his own to her. 

I felt like, in the majority of the film, Oskar had a strained relationship with both of his parents, and did not get the attention he desired. I invite anyone who reads this post to discuss their thoughts on that too, because at the same time the scene with he and his mother brushing their teeth together threw me for a loop, because that struck me as a nice mother-son moment. Going off of that idea, though, perhaps one could argue Oskar is just so thankful someone wants to pay attention to him, which could be why he ignores Elie’s comments about “not being a girl”.

As far as Elie being a vampire that this generation deserves, that’s a very interesting thought. The fact that she wanted to avoid “going steady” could speak to the fact that marriage isn’t as sacred an institution it once was, that relationships have become much more casual. However, her overall role, interestingly enough takes a more traditional turn when you think of it; from what we know, her caretakers are men, and she is a female vampire, which could be taken as a statement for the man being the breadwinner in a family (or, in her case, the blood-winner). She could’ve just as easily attached herself to Oskar’s mother emotionally, if she could’ve been convinced, and had a maternal figure in her life and the story could’ve forfeited romance for a film about family dynamics, a little Brady Bunch meets the Adams Family. The fact that Elie is a young girl with such strong and evil powers I think can speak to today’s fears. In a world where children harm each other and adults, the idea of a young girl having such a powerful, demonic capacity is very real and frightening. At the same time, audiences are not yet expecting this from a character of this appearance.