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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Kensuke’s Kingdom review – Michael Morpurgo’s desert island boy’s own adventure

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Morpurgo’s yarn about a kid on a round the world voyage is adapted by Frank Cottrell-Boyce and attractively packaged as a family-friendly animation

Michael Morpurgo’s children’s story is a boy’s-own desert island adventure, closer in spirit to The Coral Island than Lord of the Flies, and here attractively presented as a family animated feature, adapted by the children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce. The story itself makes clear that the action must be happening around the time of the original novel’s publication in 1999, and not really the present day.

Michael (voiced by Aaron MacGregor) is a moody, lonely boy on a round-the-world sailing trip with his family, but his immaturity and unreliability exasperate his older teen sister (Raffey Cassidy) and parents (Sally Hawkins and Cillian Murphy). Unbeknownst to any of them, Michael has smuggled his beloved dog Stella aboard and when their craft hits stormy seas, Michael and Stella get washed up on a remote island which he soon discovers is in fact the private kingdom of an elderly Japanese second world war veteran, Kensuke (Ken Watanabe) whose own story is a poignant and awe-inspiring contrast to Michael’s.

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