Fridae

So here it is: all good things come to an end, even the Twilight Saga – unlike the lifespans of its protagonists.

To be kinder to the franchise as it ends, let's just say that the saga is to be approached for what it is: a pro-abstinence, pro-life daydream for teenage girls melded with a 50s/60s teen rebel flick in the guise of a monster mash.

The final instalment has also snagged the director with the best CV out of all the directors that have worked on the franchise so far: Bill Condon, whose estimable work on such films as Gods and Monsters, Kinsey and Dreamgirls reveals him to be a filmmaker of great sensitivity and tact.

Breaking Dawn is basically what the previous instalments have been building up to: Bella Swan and Edward Cullen finally marry, They get their honeymoon and finally consummate their marriage. Then, Bella has to face her greatest challenge of all: childbirth. I have no idea how vampire sperm is supposed to work or if vampires are even supposed to have sperm given they're already dead but somehow Bella and Edward's union results in a child, whose voracious appetite for blood begins to kill Bella even while in the womb. The rest of the movie consists of Bella being gravely ill, Edward brooding soulfully, and romantic rival and werewolf Jacob Black brooding darkly. Oh, and nothing more than the Vampire/Werewolf treaty being possibly violated by Bella's pregnancy and resulting in the hostile attention of both the local wolfpack and the Volturi Vampire Council.

The otherwise almost paint-by-numbers storyline is well served by the pretty pictures as conceived by Condon and his cinematographer, regular Del Toro/Rodriguez collaborator Guillermo Navarro. Gone are the self-absorbed Bella Swan narrative monologues whose drone marked previous instalments. Visually, Condon adds poetic flourishes to various scenes that give the film the air of a Douglas Sirk melodrama at times. Feathers float ephemerally over a bed, flowers blow in the wind, and a wedding cake built of corpses are just some of the sometimes mawkish, often poetic, occasionally genuinely scary imagery that the movie is infused with. Stewart proves, with the greater range her character is given in this instalment, that she is indeed a genuinely good actress, while Pattinson and Lautner continue to channel thrift store versions of James Dean and Marlon Brando.

The movie ends on a cliffhanger, obviously to introduce the now-vampire Bella Swan in the next instalment. The franchise ends with its most competently directed instalment yet.