The Blood Countess review – Isabelle Huppert reigns supreme in a surreal vampire fantasia

Vienna turns into a playground of camp, cruelty and aristocratic disdain in a blackly comic take on the Báthory legend – with Huppert gloriously suited to the title role From the dark heart of central Europe comes a midnight-movie romp through the moonlit urban glades of Euro-goth and camp from German director Ulrike Ottinger. As for the star … well, it’s the part she was born to play. Isabelle Huppert is Countess Elizabeth Báthory, 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer, legendary for having the blood of hundreds of young girls on her hands and indeed her body, in an attempt to attain eternal youth. The “blood countess” has been variously played in the past by Ingrid Pitt, Delphine Seyrig, Paloma Picasso, Julie Delpy and many more, but surely none were as qualified as Huppert who importantly does not modify her habitual hauteur one iota for the role. Her natural aristocratic mien and cool hint of elegant contempt were never so well matched with a part. She gives us the ...

‘I’m 90. I worry if I’m gonna make it to lunch’: Michael Caine and John Standing on wives, war and feeling like the Queen

The actors star alongside the late Glenda Jackson in The Great Escaper, the moving real-life story of a D-day veteran. They reflect on class, communism and female cage-fighting

Michael Caine wears two watches: an analogue for the time and an Apple for everything else. It even knows his pulse, he says, impressed. Right now, it’s telling him his flat is 26C: warm enough for his wife, Shakira, to pour iced coffee into his flask, but not hot enough for those balcony doors to be open: “It’s blowing a bloody gale in here!”

I slide them shut slightly. Is that OK? A bit more. Enough? Bit more. I close them completely. He’s happy now.

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