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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Tatsuya Nakadai obituary

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One of the greatest actors of Japanese cinema best known for Ran, the 1985 film adaptation of King Lear

Though he had the well-appointed bone structure of the 1950s matinee idol, it was Tatsuya Nakadai’s eyes that seized film audiences. Using these huge brown saucers to telegraph naivety or eerie self-possession, the Japanese actor, who has died aged 92, seemed at times to be able to make them protrude from his skull.

In the centrepiece scene of Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 King Lear adaptation Ran, when Nakadai’s warlord is ejected from his burning castle, his glare of incipient madness is unbearable.

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