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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Regretting You review – sudsy Colleen Hoover adaptation is no It Ends with Us

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The second big screen take on one of the hugely successful author’s trauma dramas is a bland misfire and wastes Girls actor Allison Williams in the lead

It’s hard to remember now, nearly a year into the legal and reputational slugfest that is Justin Baldoni v Blake Lively, that It Ends With Us, the film at the heart of so much litigious mudslinging – predominantly and relentlessly, it should be noted, by Baldoni’s legal team – was a Hollywood success story.

The first big-screen adaptation of bestselling author Colleen Hoover, an initially self-published romance writer catapulted by BookTok to cult-figure status under the mononym CoHo, successfully elevated what many have dismissed as trauma porn fetishizing abuse into glossy, but effective and emotionally mature, adult theatrical fare. Lively, a Taylor Swift-adjacent style icon (to some) who excels at warm-hearted melodrama, was the perfect anchor for a film targeting what celebrity gossip columnist Elaine Lui termed the “minivan majority” (exurban/suburban, white, middle-class women); the film grossed $350m, against a $25m budget, making it one of the biggest hits of the summer.

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