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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From Twister to Titanic: writers on their favourite disaster movies

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As the tornado-chasing sequel Twisters arrives, Guardian writers pick the films that have stuck with them the longest

While sadness is never too far from the frame in the disaster genre – the majority of films, after all, do involve the mass erasure of life – it’s rarely felt quite as heavy as it did in 1998’s other comet movie Deep Impact. It unfolds with the frightening urgency of a serious-minded political thriller, as Téa Leoni’s ambitious journalist realises her big scoop is far bigger than she had initially thought, a misunderstood acronym leading her to realise the world might be coming to an end. What always struck, and scared, me as a teenager was just how hopeless things then felt – an aborted mission to throw it off course, a limited and unjust lottery for some to stay safe in shelters, a host of horrible choices to be made – with so much of the film then haunted by the thoughts and fears of people truly facing their own mortality (James Horner’s crushing score is an added killer). It’s most painfully felt in Leoni’s fractured family, her parents played by the Julia co-stars Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell with far more punch and complexity than one expects in this territory. While the world might not ultimately end, it’s hit by devastation of an unfathomable scale, a reminder of how powerless and unprepared the world would be if such a day were to ever come. It still gives me a chill. Benjamin Lee

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