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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The loss of actor Lee Sun-kyun casts a chill shadow over Korea’s film world | Peter Bradshaw

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Lee, who has died aged 48, was a homegrown star who graduated to global fame in the multi-award-winning Parasite

K-class, K-prestige and K-artistry found their apogee in the movies with Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning 2019 smash Parasite – and this colossally successful South Korean social satire certainly found a place for one of that country’s biggest stars.

In his 40s and in his prime, with a string of blue-chip movie credits and a home-turf household name due to his TV work, Lee Sun-kyun displayed in Parasite his discreet charisma and sleek movie-star handsomeness with a sexual presence that could be dialled up or down.

It was a supporting role, and his character – destined here to be upstaged – was the karmic opposite of the star, Song Kang-ho, who played Kim, the rackety head of a predatory family of petty criminals who infiltrate a wealthy household as an apparently unrelated bunch of live-in servants. Their employer is Mr Park, played by Lee, a well-to-do man with a picture-perfect lifestyle who is, perhaps, Jekyll to Kim’s Hyde, but Lee’s performance radiated a kind of smugness in the glamour.

Fans of Lee might well have savoured the residual aura of sexuality that he brought with him – from movies where he played a married man having (or ambiguously about to have) a forbidden relationship.

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