The Blood Countess

1 hr. 59 min. | Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Detective, Dark Comedy | Pegi 13

German cinema icon Ulrike Ottinger offers a singular, ironic reimagining of the vampire myth, with Isabelle Huppert as the hedonistic vampire Countess Elizabeth Báthory, revelling in a life of eternal beauty. Every 25 years, she awakens from a deep sleep to claim new victims across Austria. This time, alongside the delectable red elixir, she is searching for a book which, legend has it, can turn a vampire back into a human if its pages are moistened with a vampire’s tears. Together with her devoted maid Hermine, the Countess sets out to find and destroy the dangerous volume, whose power could eradicate all evil - including vampires like themselves. Their quest becomes a treasure hunt through Vienna’s magnificent historic sites. They draw the Countess’s melancholic nephew Rudi Bubi, a vegetarian vampire, and his psychotherapist into the search; as the trail leads into Bohemia, their eccentric circle widens further. Yet a pair of vampirologists and a police inspector remain hot on their heels. Ottinger reinvents the vampire myth as a sumptuous adventure filled with macabre black humour and a deep affection for Vienna’s architecture.