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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Marianne Jean-Baptiste: ‘I’d work for Mike Leigh again in a heartbeat – in fact, I’ll pay him!’

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The actor moved to LA 22 years ago. Now she’s back in the UK to star alongside Bryan Cranston in All My Sons. She talks about the frightening rehearsal schedule, how she’d work again with Mike Leigh in a heartbeat, and why she’s taking up boot-making

Marianne Jean-Baptiste arrives at the rehearsal space in  Southwark, south London, and immediately announces that she’s exhausted. It wouldn’t be surprising if nerves were getting the better of her; she’s seven days into a three-week rehearsal period for a new production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, which is brutally short by anyone’s standards. Peeling off unnecessary layers of clothes – it’s not a cold morning – she says jet lag has been messing with her circadian rhythms since she flew in from Los Angeles 10 days ago. “I woke up at 3.17am and was like: fucking hell, it’s early. I lay there for a while, running lines from the play in my head. Then I thought: ‘Just get up and marinate the chicken.’ I made some ginger and lemon tea and finally went back to bed at 5.30am – better to rest and meditate even if I couldn’t sleep.” She was just dropping off when the alarm went off at 7am.

These days it takes a lot to lure Jean-Baptiste away from her home in Los Angeles, where she has lived with her husband and two daughters full-time since 2003. She loves coming back to her native London to see family and friends, but LA has a slower pace, optimism, a vast ocean – and, for a long time, it offered better opportunities to work. Her breakthrough role as the optometrist in search of her birth mother in the 1996 Mike Leigh film Secrets & Lies brought a Golden Globe nomination and she became the first Black British woman to be nominated for an Academy Award. She memorably played Doreen Lawrence in the 1999 TV movie The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, but then – nothing much. Most offers of work came from the US.

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