ART-HOUSE film-makers have never paid much attention to zombies, but they can’t seem to resist giving us their spin on vampire lore. In the past few years we’ve had Tim Burton's “Dark Shadows” (2012), Neil Jordan’s “Byzantium” (2012), Chan-Wook Park’s “Thirst” (2009), and Tomas Alfredson’s “Let The Right One In” (2008). And now we have Jim Jarmusch’s “Only Lovers Left Alive”, a languorous but playful mood piece which is also one of the writer-director’s most engaged and engaging films. It doesn’t have a great deal of narrative momentum—this is Mr Jarmusch, after all—but it does have rich, beguiling characters, a steady stream of dry comedy and a thoughtful vision of what it might be like to roam the planet for a thousand years. Its protagonists (played by the suitably pallid and slender Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) are named Adam and Eve. It’s typical of the film’s teasing wit that the question of whether they are the Biblical Adam and Eve is not even raised. Either way, they are now impeccably stylish bohemians who are more interested in philosophy and art than they are in enslaving mankind, or other such vampiric pursuits. They get their blood not from the necks of their victims, but from their contacts in hospitals. They don’t turn into bats, and they aren’t affected by garlic, but their low-level psychic powers do lead them to muddle up the present and the future. “Have the water wars started yet,” asks Eve. “Or is it still about the oil?”

Key to the film’s muffled and quietly mesmeric atmosphere is that it sees the world from their perspective, which means that it’s set entirely at night. When its ever-youthful protagonists are awake, everyone else is sleeping.

That suits Adam, a reclusive former rock star who lounges around a cluttered mansion on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan. He is a grumpy, Byronic sort of vampire—indeed, he used to be friends with Byron—and he despairs at the human race’s despoiling of the environment. Drolly, humans are known in vampire parlance as “zombies”.

Eve, Adam’s loving wife, is more positive about the new century: she uses an iPhone, while he prefers caressing his collection of vintage guitars. Eve is also extrovert enough to want to socialise in Tangier with an old acquaintance, Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt)—and he definitely is the famous Christopher Marlowe. But when she hears how gloomy Adam has grown without her, she flies back to America, specifying a night flight when she books her ticket. Together again, Adam and Eve drive around the spookily deserted Detroit, admiring the crumbling industrial edifices which are so beloved of “ruin porn” photographers, and which make the city such an inspired setting for a vampire film. Alas, their domestic bliss is interrupted by a visit from Eve’s younger sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), an exuberant wild child who resides in Los Angeles. “Zombie central,” sniffs Adam, who still hasn’t forgiven her for a faux pas committed 87 years earlier.

There are some sparks of conflict when Ava barges into their happy home, but at no point does “Only Lovers Left Alive” threaten to blaze up into a plot-fuelled thriller. It is, though, a romantic study of a strong if unconventional marriage, a wry commentary on short-termism and eco-vandalism, and a debate on what makes life (eternal or otherwise) worth living. As long and laidback as it is, it leaves you thirsty for more.