"How about Facepunch?" Bella (Kristen Stewart) says, her eyes flickering for the umpteenth time, her face down, as if talking to her own breasts.
"Facepunch?" her friend asks. "Why, that's an action movie, Bella!"
"Action, adrenaline, that's kind of my thing."
Sorry Bella, I must disagree with you. Looking at you - a pale-faced, perhaps simple-minded, just-turned-18-year-old, who seems to do nothing other than sit immobile by your window pining for your vampire boyfriend who has vanished into thin air - the words "biker chick", "adrenaline junkie" or "cliff diver" do not come to mind.
Rather, you seem to be the typical teenager with more or less typical teen problems.
So what's with the sudden change in personality, Bella?
Well, we owe all of this - this other side of Bella, the adventurous part of her - to the one and only important thing in this movie: Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the vampire with the brooding good looks and sparkling body.
What has this young man with the manners of an 18th-century nobleman done to turn this innocent girl into a sniffling, manic-depressive creature? He left, disappeared.
The movie starts with Bella's birthday. She turns 18, and it seems that everybody is ecstatic about it, except for her: All Bella can think about is that she's one year older than Edward (although technically, Edward is 109 years old).
Throughout the day, Bella keeps shushed and only reluctantly accepts birthday greetings and presents.
After attending her birthday party hosted by the Cullens, Bella gets a paper cut, dripping blood onto the carpet, and is promptly pushed to a table and bleeds some more after one of the Cullens tries to jump her.
Edward suddenly disappears from school only to be found in the middle of Bella's backyard, staring at the sun, sky or whatever it is. After pulling Bella into the woods, he tells her that he's leaving. Bella begs him to stay. Edward disappears, leaving Bella in the woods.
The movie then dives through months of Bella's life without Edward, which basically shows her sitting immobile in front of her window.
She writes letters to Alice Cullen depicting her hollow life and nightmares that vaguely remind us of a scene from The Exorcist.
Then comes Jacob. The long-haired Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) has a positive disposition, quite the opposite of the brooding, male-model type Edward. But don't be mistaken: Jacob's quite the male model too, with his newly acquired six-pack that leaves Bella stressed out on six separate occasions, a pearly toothed smile and his possessiveness over Bella.
So Jacob fills Bella's life, mends the large hole in her heart, and almost completely cures her. But despite all his efforts to make her get over the memory of Edward, Bella has taken up a new hobby: putting herself in danger.
It starts when Bella takes up an offer from a stranger to ride his bicycle, when she sees an apparition of Edward. Being a smart girl, Bella figures out that whenever she puts herself in danger - in a speeding vehicle or jumping from high places - then she can see Edward again.
So for the best part of an hour in the movie, we see Bella falling from motorcycles, jumping off cliffs, bleeding heavily - actions that don't seem to push Jacob further away, but rather pull him closer to her.
But of course, this bond that Jacob has created with Bella is broken one day when he makes the mistake of not telling Bella that Edward had called. By broken I don't mean Bella shuts out Jacob and cries and screams in her room, but the words suicide, Volturi and Brazil are thrown around.
Volturis, you ask? They're the royal family of vampires, the highest-ranking members of the breed. Unexpectedly, the Volturis, consisting of the beautiful and talented lineup of Aro (Michael Sheen), Marcus (Christopher Heyerdahl) and Jane (Dakota Fanning), only appear in two very intense, very mesmerizing scenes, and then disappear.
So where are we now? Back to Bella's incessant moping and Edward's proclamations of undying love, which ain't Shakespeare.
The movie finishes with the clich*d scene of Jacob and Edward going head-to-head in a fight over Bella, incorporating that whole classic theme of vampire-versus-werewolf, though it doesn't take a genius to guess who Bella picks.
Bella is a mopey, sniffling teenager who goes through her days convinced that she's the unluckiest girl in the world and nobody understands her.
Edward is a shining, glittering, gentleman vampire, perhaps more fit to be on the cover of a glossy magazine than in a small town like Forks - and as a model, at least he wouldn't need to talk.
And Jacob, why he's just a simple country boy, blooming, excellent as a man, hanging out with the wrong crowd and making his fair share of teen mistakes.
And surely only a madman would ever think of combining these three emotionally and physically unstable creatures into a movie, which surpasses even The Exorcist.
Two out of five stars.
tHE TWILIGHT SAGa: New Moon (sUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT, 130 MINS)
Directed by Chris Weitz
Written by Melissa Rosenberg, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer
Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
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