Producers: Judith Lou Lévy, Lola Pacchioni and Marco Pacchioni Director: Adrien Beau Screenplay: Adrien Beau and Hadrien Bouvier Cast: Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Grégoire Colin, Vassili Schneider, Claire Duburcq, Gabriel Pavie and Adrien Beau Distributor: Oscilloscope Laboratories
Grade: B
If you’re one of those moviegoers who cherishes Roman Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers” as a guilty pleasure, you should definitely look up Adrien Beau’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s (Aleksey Konstantinovich, not Leo) 1839 novella “La Famille du Vourdalak.” The comedy is black rather than slapstick and the bloodletting considerably more graphic, but it carries a similar oddball vibe.
Though it makes some changes to the source, particularly toward the close, the script by Beau and Hadrien Bouvier is generally quite faithful to what was perhaps the earliest European vampire tale. An effete French nobleman, the Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein), is acting as an envoy of the king somewhere in Eastern Europe when his entourage is attacked and he’s left desperate and alone. On advice of a farmer who turns him away, he approaches the home of respected peasant elder Gorcha for help.
Gorcha, he’s told by the man’s eldest son Jegor (Grégoire Colin), is away tracking the Turkish band of Alibek that’s been ravaging the area, and Jegor cannot provide a horse immediately. But he offers shelter for the night with the family—his wife Anja (Claire Duburcq), their young son Vlad (Gabriel Pavie), and Jegor’s younger brother Piotr (Vassili Schneider) and sister Sdenka (Ariane Labed).
It’s a peculiar bunch. Jegor is bullish, Anja sullen and Vlad shy. Piotr has the habit of dressing in female garb. And despondent Sdenka longs to get away; Jegor faults her for falling for a previous wanderer and trying to leave with him.
What stands out, however, is their absolute deference to the absent patriarch, who has been away for nearly six days on his quest. Before he left, he informed them that if he were gone more than six days, it would mean that he’d been killed and that if he returned after that, he would not be himself, and they should act accordingly. When he does come back shortly after the deadline has elapsed, he is indeed different—in the eyes of the marquis, at least. In this telling, Gorcha is a life-sized, skeletal puppet (voiced by Beau) who shows that he’s been successful in his mission by plopping Alibek’s severed head on the dining table. But he’s clearly not human: he’s a vourdalak, a vampire who, according to legend, feeds on his own family.
By this time the marquis—who, with his powdered white face, wig, and slightly mincing gait, looks no less inhuman than Gorcha—has become entranced with Sdenka, and suggests that they go off to the French court together. Gorcha, meanwhile, has plans of his own, and powers as well; and the fact that Jegor is so obedient to his will, and that the others who might consider taking action against the malevolent creature prove incapable of doing so, makes the Frenchman’s position seem hopeless—though a concluding twist seems to prove otherwise.
The juxtaposition of dark humor and bracing violence, melded with a gruesomely erotic charge near the close, makes for a hauntingly unsettling brew. But “The Vourdalak” fascinates not merely by reason of its unusual take on vampire lore but because of its peculiar technique. The set design (Thibault Pinto) and costumes (Anne Blanchard) are fairly ordinary (though the marquis’ garb is quite nice), and the lapidary editing by Alan Jobart makes the film seem longer than it actually is. But the texture of the images, shot in Super 16mm by David Chizallet, is extraordinary, giving the daylight sequences a luminous glow and the interiors an almost tactile graininess, reminding one a bit of the saturated Hammer style of the late fifties. The score by Martin Le Nouvel and Maïa Xifaras adds to the otherworldly mood.
And while the slight, angular Klein expertly encases the marquis’ befuddlement within a determination to appear in control—rather like an extra-dandified Ichabod Crane—and the other humans are suitably cowed (with Schneider conveying particular pathos), it’s the sepulchral Gorcha who dominates the proceedings, just as he does his family. The fact that the puppet’s movements are stiff and robotic, and that the sonorous voice doesn’t exactly match up with the movement of the mouth, gives the figure a ghoulishly surrealistic appearance, making the creature somewhat silly but also weirdly frightening.
Vampire movies have never been thin on the ground, but by taking risks “The Vourdalak” brings some fresh blood to the genre.