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

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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 ...
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Nightmare review – atmospheric property horror treads line between dreams and reality

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A young woman is tormented in her sleep in this crepuscular debut feature from Norwegian writer-director Kjersti Helen Rasmussen

If there is one place you would have thought a sleep-deprived person might be able to stop herself dropping off, it’s in a lecture about sleep. But that’s what this atmospheric but somewhat heavy-handed debut feature from Norway has its protagonist Mona (Eili Harboe) do as she is introduced by dishevelled academic Aksel (Dennis Storhøi) to the possibility that she has become the victim of the mythical incubus Mare. This may explain a recent run of freakish dreams in which she’s tormented by a vampiric doppelganger of her caring boyfriend Robby (Herman Tømmeraas).

Nightmare also belongs to the school of property horror already occupied by The Tenant and Mother! Left alone by Robby, a high-flyer preoccupied with some kind of algorithmic investment venture, Mona is charged with renovating their sprawling new apartment which they acquired on the cheap after its previous occupant, who was pregnant, died in a mysterious accident. Their neighbours, who have a newborn baby and are prone to staring eerily across the courtyard, seem to have issues, too. But none of this rings any alarm bells until Mona – vaguely thinking about having kids with Robby – begins sleepwalking.

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