The Countess
Julie Delpy
Initial release:
If you're at all a fan of vampires and vampire legend, you probably know the story of Báthori Erzsébet, or Elizabeth Bathory in English, a notorious countess from the turn of the 17th century who, legend goes, bathed herself in the blood of countless young women, mostly peasants, to preserve her beauty. Eventually she was caught, and walled up within her chambers at her castle until she died in her sleep four years later. Though the legend is well known, it’s difficult to determine what actually
happened. Historical record shows she stood accused of all manner of
crimes, but the ambiguity of history, the circumstantial nature of the evidence, as well as political circumstances
of the time, leave open the question: was she framed? It’s a tempting
idea, at least: Bathory was a powerful, wealthy woman in a turbulent
time not known for its egalitarianism, and her chief accuser, George
Thurzo, stood to benefit quite a bit from her downfall. Nevertheless: most depictions of her in the centuries since are unflattering, leaning into the "lesbian vampire" genre's more unsavory tropes to portray her as a sinister predator of young women. Even leaving aside the obviously fantastical nature of the vampire myth, not everyone really buys into everything they hear about Bathory; films like veteran French actress and filmmaker Julie Delpy's The Countess attempt a more even handed portrayal.
Aside
from directing the film, Delpy also stars as the titular countess, a
Hungarian noblewoman raised in cruelty. Following the death of her husband, a dull, unimaginative man, she shacks up with Istvan Thurzo (Daniel Brühl), a nobleman 20 years her
junior, but his father George conspires to split them apart. Assuming
it’s the age difference that ends their relationship, she becomes
increasingly distraught over her appearance. An incident where she
strikes a servant girl and gets some blood on herself leads her to
believe that virgin blood can restore her youth. The more obsessed she
gets with this idea, the higher the body count gets. Lurking
in the background is George (played by the underrated William Hurt), as well as Vizakna, a sinister nobleman who had been encouraging Elizabeth's worst impulses. In the end, she’s exposed by Istvan,
arrested, and locked away. All very tidy. but…
Rather than a horror film, The Countess is a historical drama about vanity and power. Bathory is a learned (and quite bisexual) woman pitted against a male-dominated world, with little respect for the ruling Catholic paradigm, but spirals into madness after her failed romance. Delpy discharges the role amazingly, with subtle makeup effects to make her look older than she really is. (She would have been about Bathory’s age when she made the film.)
Most of the camera work is pretty standard, though there are some excellent wide shots as well as a well-choreographed dance scene. The film also doesn’t linger overmuch on scenes of torture, preferring to go montage-style with the bodies being dumped in the woods.
The idea that Bathory was framed has gained traction in recent years, in part due to another film, Juraj Jakubisko's Bathory, a Slovakian film released in 2008 that also puts forth the idea that Bathory was betrayed by Thurzo to gain her properties. In that film, her guilt is largely a matter of misunderstanding; according to Delpy's film, her crimes are driven by insecurity and hallucination and spurred on deliberately by a politically motivated player. The truth is, we'll probably never know. The
nobility of Hungary were mostly Protestant in a nation ruled by the
Catholic Habsburg family. This plus hints of an early Slovak nationalism
suggest the whole scandal was seen as dangerous to the nobility. With
this in mind, it’s easy to see why Thurzo worked to hush up the whole
incident. Only the barest amount of evidence was given to condemn
Bathory’s assistants, who were all executed; Bathory herself was walled up in her chambers,
rather than consigned to the stake, to prevent a scandal. In the years since, Bathory has been held up as everything as a cruel vampiress to a Slovakian
spook story to an unjustly punished feminist heroine. The truth, as they
say, is likely somewhere in the middle.
The Countess certainly lives by that motto; Bathory in popular fiction is nearly always some villainous lesbian vampire who bathes in blood, the kind of creature you’d see in a Roger Corman film or Hammer horror flick. Here, she's still monstrous, but she's also just one more monster in a kingdom full of them.
-june❤