The Countess (4 Stars)

Search for the truth.

This is a 2009 film starring Julie Delpy as Countess Erzsebet Bathory, commonly called Elizabeth Bathory in English. Julie Delpy also wrote the screenplay, directed the film and composed the music. She's a true all-round talent. The film was made in Germany with mostly German actors (the exception being William Hurt), but it was made in English.

Countess Bathory is known as the woman who bathed in the blood of virgins, thinking it would give her eternal youth. There are doubts whether this really happened, but other films such as Hammer's "Countess Dracula" perpetuate the story. In recent years there seems to have been an obsession with the real Countess Bathory. Between 2008 and 2009 there were three films made about her, all three claiming to tell the true story and not the myth of the blood monster. I own all three on DVD, so maybe the obsession is mine. Apart from that there was a Hungarian television series about her life in 2010, which hasn't yet been made available in English. All three films claim to tell the truth, but if you watch them back to back you would get the impression that they are about three different women. "Blood Countess" (2008) accepts her blood-letting as true and shows her as a lesbian who only used men to gain more power. "Bathory" (2008) rejects the blood-letting completely, and shows her as a powerful but misunderstood woman struggling to survive in a man's world. "The Countess" (2009) takes a middle path, showing the blood-letting in a story told by a narrator (Daniel Brühl), but then the narrator suggests that it might all have been fabricated by her enemies.

What are the other similarities and differences? "Blood Countess" and "The Countess" show her as cruel, while "Bathory" shows her as gentle. "Blood Countess" and "Bathory" show her as emotional, whereas "The Countess" shows her as remote. "Bathory" is the only film of the three that doesn't attribute any lesbian tendencies to her. All three films have in common that she was hated by the men of her time for the simple reason that she was a woman.

So which of the three films paints a true picture? It's impossible to say, because history is written by the victors, and Countess Bathory lost the fight against her male opponents. "Bathory" is doubtlessly the most enjoyable film, since it shows the Countess as a pleasant, likeable woman. If I had to make a guess I'd say that "The Countess" is more accurate. Whether or not she really killed virgins to bathe in their blood, I believe she was a cruel woman. Although I enjoy the film, this is the very reason why I can't rate it higher. The main character is someone that I find repulsive.