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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Dreams review – Jessica Chastain channels rich Americans whose charity comes with strings

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The erotic reward for Chastain’s sponsorship of a Mexican dancer lights a fuse that reveals philanthropy’s toxic underside

Mexican director Michel Franco returns with a chilly, angrily intense and deeply pessimistic tale of erotic obsession among the liberal super-rich in Trump’s US who seek to launder and redeem their guilt by sponsoring the arts. It’s a really involving picture which beckons you hypnotically towards the tacit promise of a sensationally unhappy and violent denouement, and of course Franco is unlikely to deliver any other kind. The two final plot developments are shocking, if not precisely surprising, and in fact vulnerable to the charge of being crudely obvious – but Franco certainly gives us a gripping emotional drama, supercharged with toxic sensuality and fear.

Jessica Chastain plays Jennifer McCarthy, a wealthy woman based in San Francisco extensively accustomed to high-end restaurants, couture, private planes and chauffeur-driven SUVs and Franco has an eye for the luxury-porn scenarios familiar from TV dramas such as Succession and The White Lotus, though with a more dyspeptic and fearful edge.

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