tapio_hietamaki
The Countess is a partly truthful historical drama that tells the story of the infamous Countess Bathory, who reportedly bathed in blood and served as inspiration for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. There's also a metal band named after her.The film is strong on visuals, having beautiful woods, castles and costumes. The story is told painfully slowly, and sometimes the atmosphere isn't really enough to make up for it.Julie Delpy is cold and distancing, which makes the character intriguing but feels a bit jarring at the end where we are supposed to sympathize with her.
jshoaf
Well, actually, in the Little Carpathians, apparently, which are not part of Transylvania, or so Wikipedia tells me. I really enjoyed this film (at home on pay-per-view)though I think it is intended for a pretty narrow audience. As others have noted, the dialogue is amazingly stilted (very literary, rather like a French novel of the 17th or 18th century) and delivered in near-monotone. I kept feeling that the whole movie had been dubbed into English. On the other hand, I found the acting very fine, and I admired the insistence on presenting these characters as not at all like you, me, or the folks in the latest TV drama. The Countess in particular is a strange, unique portrait--her piety, her desire for amorous adventure, her pride, her intelligence. And that's before you get to the blood-of-virgins part.The film proposes that what we are seeing before our eyes is not the truth about the Countess. We are watching a fantasy of a noblewoman enacting a tale "told by the victors"--by the men who were enriched by her downfall and relieved, too, to be rid of the very possibility of an intelligent woman. The tale is told, too, by the peasants and others whose sons are fighting in her army. Yet the man who questions the gory story is her lover, and he too may be deceived. There is no simple answer to the question, what really happened?--no resolution.In short, it's an intellectual (and visual) treat, but it won't affect your blood sugar.
rnl-otto
I did not regard "The countess" as a historical or a horror movie. I rather saw it as a portrait of a woman. I think the movie wants to show the very destructive effect falling in love can have when a person is very insecure and does not have the ability to reflect its own behavior. In some way that connects to "2 days in Paris" which also dealt with the difficulties of love. The movie also had a feminist side to me: on the one hand it deals with the obsession of beauty (a kind of female issue, also an issue that matters especially to actresses). The countess crosses ethic limits to gain or keep beauty and youth - maybe an analogy to plastic surgery. The murderers committed by the countess are also compared to war: is it better to kill for power than for beauty? A political view is that the countess is not mainly sued because she has committed crimes but because her power is so huge that many people are happy to get rid of her (which is how politic still sometimes works nowadays). Regarding these facets the countess is a parable to human behavior today. It does not want to be a historical movie. I still can see that especially Hungarians are annoyed when they see (and hear)non-Hungarian actors in this movie speaking English (even though the actors are not English) and saying Hungarian names in a non-Hungarian way. As i said before it is not a historical movie and the setting should just be regarded as a frame. I also remember reading an interview with Julie Delpy quite some years ago where she complains about not getting any roles in the US because her accent is "too french". I think mixing actors from different countries she wants to show (or find out) that (or if) a movie can work even though there is an international cast. Regarding the countess as a parable i think that can work. But as my boyfriend does not like watching movies in English we watched the dubbed German version and i really don't know if the accents would have bothered me... Anyways i can see the movie does not really fit a genre so i understand people have troubles with it. I prefer not to think in genres and categories too much - if you do so too I think you will be able to enjoy this movie.
LeaBlacks_Balls
I really wanted to like this. Based on the true story of 17th century Countess Bathory, who grew obsessed with retaining her youth, and decided the best way to do this was by bathing in the blood of virgins. What could have been a disturbing descent into madness turns out to be a dull by the numbers bio-pic/period piece.Julie Delpy does an alright job in the titular role, but the departure from her usual romantic roles doesn't really work, as Delpy just seems like she's on auto-pilot throughout most of the film. The script, written by Delpy, treats the Countess as some sort of feminist pioneer, and at other times, shows her to be a monster. The movie wants to have it both ways, but in the end it it just seems really confused and tiresome.
AD
