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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Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing review – candy-haired popsters put on a show

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A garbled story of metaverse musicians based on a mobile game leaves its audience little to grasp hold of

Even by the standards of franchise anime that caters to the faithful and drops newcomers in blind, this is particularly incomprehensible. Based on the mobile game Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!, it features a barely characterised blur of wannabe musicians and actors who ascribe Manhattan Project importance to writing syrupy J-pop. As they interact with virtual counterparts in metaverses called “Sekai” created from users’ emotions, the film is like The Matrix if Neo had huffed a nitrous oxide canister before having every edition of Pop Idol downloaded into his cranium.

One of the virtual pop stars, a rogue version of Hatsune Miku (voiced by Saki Fuijta), keeps invading high-school kids’ mobile phones and flatscreens, begging for help. Apparently issuing from a Sekai created by the emo angst of everyone about to give up on their creative ambitions, she is hoping to connect with these lost souls. So Miku taps this creative hive mind about how better to refine the ditty she believes can unite the world – while the seething mass of negativity in her home dimension swells to apocalyptic proportions.

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