Bela Legosi was Hungarian, Not Swedish

Vampire books and movies are all the rage right now. Anna, a huge fan of the Twilight books, was disappointed by the movie. She and I have discussed extensively whether a movie should closely mirror the book. Anna thinks it should. She thinks if you're calling it the same thing that you should know that people expect the movie to be the same as the book. I have argued that they are very different mediums and that the movie should be an interpretation and try to not specifically follow the book.

I don't find either of our arguments extraordinary, but I do find the type of conversation to be extraordinary. She is a little adult. A little friend who discusses things with me. While I am still her mother and remind her to wear her retainer and make her bed, I also get to have conversations about art and entertainment with her.

We took Mary with us last night to see "Let the Right One In," which is a swedish vampire movie. The characters were a twelve year old boy and girl. I read the reviews carefully and decided it would be ok for the girls to go with me. It was Mary's first movie with subtitles and she said later that it took her awhile to get used to it, but she liked it.

The kids are used to being the only kids at the University theater. I drag them to documentaries and showings of "Gone With the Wind" and even movie talks with visiting directors. Anna is used to subtitled movies by now. (As a child she thought that was the name of the movies that I rented from Blockbuster. "Why do you rent the same movie every week?" she once asked me. And then I realized that the foreign films all say "subtitled" on the spine of the case and she thought that was the title.) The girls got Izzy sodas and I got an herbal tea (yet another reason to prefer this theater, in my opinion).

The movie was outstanding. I am not big on vampires or horror movies, but I knew the girls would like it, and I ended up liking it as well. We walked to the car in the frigid cold talking about how the filmmaker made cold visual - how the scenes all had a frozen/static look about them. We talked about costumes, makeup and camera angles (!!!!!!) and we talked about the story. We speculated about the ending and where they were going and what would happen to them. Although the story wrapped up, it was not wrapped up with a bow on top with no question about the future of the characters. It was not clear who the "father" was that lived with the girl and I suggested a possible relationship that Anna disagreed with and proposed her own version.

"Thanks for going to a Swedish vampire movie with me," I said.

"Thanks for taking us!" they said.

"I think I like that kind of movie," Anna said.

"Swedish vampire movies?" I asked.

She laughed. "Just, the kind of movies that they show there."

"Me too," I said.

My Mommy Heart is full today. You can raise your kids to agree with your political beliefs, or religious beliefs, or be fans of the same football team as you, but who knew how much I would enjoy having kids who like foreign/independent films. So Anna and now Mary.

"After awhile I forgot that I was reading what they were saying," Mary noted.

"That's because the actors were really good," Anna said.

Be still my heart. Be still as a curtain in the window of an apartment in Stockholm with a preteen vampire sitting on the windowsill.

The film, "Let the Right One In" is apparently going to be remade in English. I think that's a real shame. It always disappoints me when Americans take an amazing movie and insist on remaking it. It's never better. I am already anticipating the conversation that Anna and I will have after she sees the remake of a foreign film. And she thought she just needed to worry about movies made from books that she loves.