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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Jafar Panahi’s Cannes victory is a wonderful moment for an amazingly courageous film-maker

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Panahi has endured years of harassment from the Iranian authorities but has created a tremendous body of work; his Palme d’Or is richly deserved

In the end, the Cannes Palme d’Or went to the most courageous film director in the world. It was a very satisfying grownup decision, favouring a remarkable and utterly individual film-maker: the director and democracy campaigner Jafar Panahi, an artist who unlike any other director in the Cannes competition really has suffered, taken real risks for cinema and spoken truth to power – and endured arrest and imprisonment for his pains.

He has created a rich canon of work which has told the world about Iranian society and the Iranian mind with a subtlety and depth that we are never going to get from the TV news.

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