Touches You

Redundant and unnecessary.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's amazing that a film with such an intriguing story, breathtaking sets, and gorgeous costumes can be so god-awful! With the singular exception of William Hurt, the acting is just bad. Julie Delpy delivers her lines with the enthusiasm of a child forced into doing the school play. I've seen more convincing acting in porno movies. The actress portraying her witch lesbian lover is even more dismal, if that's even possible. I was hoping to be drawn into a thrilling telling of the "true" story of the Countess Bathory, but instead wasted over an hour and a half of my life that I will never get back. Avoid this movie like the plague!

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.

The legend of the Red Countess, like that of Dracula and so many others has yielded several theatrical and film adaptations. The challenge is to make something new with this ancient legend, and to try to be equal to the great directors who brilliantly tackled the subject. Julie Delpy likes challenges of this kind. Not only did she write the script, direct, act, and compose the music, but her adaptation can compete with what I thought was the best previous film adaptation of the legend by Walerian Borowczyk (from the collection called Immoral Tales, and with Paloma Picasso). Delpy acknowledges her debt to this director through a number of details that those familiar with Borowczyk's works can recognize. Another great reference is Coppola's Dracula, of which Delpy borrowed the lyrical and tragic tones. Of course,this can only situate Delpy's aesthetic choices, and much of her originality rests in her interpretation of the legend. Here, she blends her own speculations about the Countess's character and motivation with historical facts, to make a new and provocative statement about the legend. The best way to see this film is to compare it with the other adaptations not as much to see who spent the money the most intelligently, but what each director has to say through the same legend.

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.