TV Review: ""Interview with the Vampire: Do You Know What It Means to Be Loved by Death" (S2, Ep. 2)
The AMC series continues to go from strength to strength the second episode of its second season, which sets up some of the major conflicts and heartbreak to come.
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It’s not every show that can go from strength to strength but, as Interview with the Vampire has demonstrated from the beginning, it is definitely one of those shows. In the second episode, Louis and Armand continue to tell their story to Daniel, relating how they came to know one another in post-World War II Paris and how the shadow of Lestat managed to cast a pall over both of their lives. Daniel, for his part, continues to express no small amount of hostility and contempt toward them, reserving most of his vitriol for Armand, with results that are, to put it mildly, mixed.
It’s clear by this point that Louis and Claudia are on two very different paths. While Louis continues to cling to both his love of Lestat and his commitment to taking as little human life as possible, Claudia really does relish the power that being a vampire gives her. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than their respective reactions to the performances from the Théâtre des Vampires. There’s no mistaking the sadistic glee that Claudia takes in watching a hapless human woman tortured on the stage for the mingled delight and horror of the audience, just as there’s no mistaking Louis’ equally fervent distaste, his jaw clenched so tightly I’m surprised his teeth didn’t break.
This isn’t to say that it’s all bleak, however, and I think there is something particularly poignant about the fact that Louis finds himself drawn to photography. The photograph, after all, has the power to capture the moment, to embalm the contingent and render it stationary. Given that we as the audience–both those of us who have read the book and those who haven’t–know that Claudia is no longer there, we can’t help but feel a stab of regret and sadness at those moments when Louis captures her in the midst of her joy even if, as becomes clear, she relishes taking human life and being amidst truly bloodthirsty more than Louis can ever bring himself to be.
Equally poignant is the moment when Louis visits Lestat’s solicitor and reads the letter his lover left behind for him. Like others, I’ve been saddened not to see more of Lestat in this season. For all that his absence is expected and makes sense considering his fate at the end of the first season, Sam Reid is just so quintessentially the Lestat as Rice imagined him that his peripheral presence in these first two episodes is unfortunate. However, he certainly makes the most out of this ghostly encounter, and this is one of those moments that really does pierce the heart, as we see from Louis’ expression–his soulful eyes, his tightly-clenched jaw–just how much his betrayal of Lestat has cost him. Though he dearly loves Claudia, theirs remains a sibling bond, while his relationship with Lestat was one of lovers and, perhaps, even of soulmates. By cutting Lestat out of his life he has sundered his own identity, and he has yet to find a way to stitch himself back together.
This episode also marks the introduction of the charming yet sinister Santiago, played here with scene-stealing panache by Ben Daniels. From the moment he appears it’s clear that he suspects that something isn’t quite right with Louis and Claudia, and though he’s undeniably charming there’s also a palpable sense of menace. This is a vampire who isn’t easily fooled, and it’s easy to see how he will eventually turn against these young Americans who have sauntered into their midst. What I particularly appreciated about Daniels’ performance of Santiago is that he avoids the campiness of Stephen Rea from the film version. There’s obviously nothing wrong with Rea, and he works in the more operatic tone of the 1994 film, but it’s still nice to see a character who is not just a foil for Louis and Claudia but a genuine danger.
And then there’s our dear, sweet Armand. A friend of mine remains unconvinced of the chemistry between Louis and Armand, but for me that’s precisely the point. While I have no doubt that Louis is smitten with Armand, the same doesn’t quite hold true in the other direction. I remain convinced that Armand sees Louis as someone that he can control, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that he also sees the younger immortal as a way of getting revenge against Lestat (who, it seems, will play a similar role in the Théâtre des Vampires as he did in the novel). There is, moreover, an edge to their dynamic that I think hints at the strife to come. Book readers will recall that Louis can never quite get over the fact that Armand was at least partially responsible for Claudia’s demise, and it’s this knowledge that keeps them from ever fully binding themselves to one another. The advantage of a serialized narrative like this one is that it allows us to see how this plays out over the long run.
As with the first episode, Daniel continues to spar with his interlocutors, though in this case he seems to get more than he bargained for when Louis and Armand excavate his own memories, with devastating effect. It’s rare that we see the caustic Daniel express anything other than contempt for the lies that the two vampires are spinning for him (his comment about the portrait of Lestat in the Théâtre des Vampires being like a plot point from a telenovela is apt but also scathing). He learns to his chagrin that tangling with immortals with the ability to read his own mind, and the Armand/Louis tag-team seems to have changed their dynamic in ways that will no doubt only become clear as the season progresses.
Overall, I absolutely loved this episode. While it had all of the lush cinematography and pulsing desire that are key to the series’ appeal, it also had more than a little self-reflexivity to it, both in Louis’ dabbling with photography and in the aforementioned moment when Daniel expresses incredulity at the presence of Lestat’s portrait at the Théâtre. It’s one of those delightful moments that reminds us of the instability of memory and the ability of the more unscrupulous among the immortals to exploit that.
Moreover, I also loved what the series did with the Théâtre des Vampires, who manage to be both quite entertaining and absolutely deadly. They might extend the hand of friendship and welcome to Louis and Claudia now, but it’s easy to see how that could change in a heartbreak once it’s revealed that they were responsible for the near-death of their maker. Likewise, their “performance” is as utterly deranged and terrifying as it is in the novel, and one can’t help but feel sorry for the poor woman who had the misfortune to be drawn into their little travesty.
Interview with the Vampire continues to be both a fantastic adaptation of Rice’s work and a magnificent piece of queer TV. I can’t wait to see what’s next!