Paul Magne Haakonsen I must admit that I had expected a bit more from this movie, especially given the story that it was portraying and telling. I just had expected something grander than what director Julie Delphy dished out here.Everyone should be fairly familiar with the bloody story of Countess Bathory, well at least if you have just an ounce of interesting in World history. So I am not going to delve into details about the storyline.What worked for this movie was the acting. Julie Delphy, who both directed and starred in the movie, did a great job in her portrayal of the Countess Erzebet Bathory. There was something very raw and emotional about her acting in "The Countess" and she really carried the movie all by herself.Julie Delphy seems rather talented, doing acting, directing, producing and even writing the music for this 2009 movie.But the movie was just too slow paced for my liking, but it was an interesting portrayal of the infamous Countess Erzebet Bathory.

Armand Beautfull images. Lovely story. Impresive ambitions.A page of Hungarian history. A legendary character and a director who desire to create all in same measure, in same time.Elisabeth Bathory is an enigma. So, only can be authentic slices of her life. Speculations are strange if the clothes are inappropriate. In this case, Julie Delpy lumps details,emotions, assumptions. But remains unfinished mosaic. The desire to create a great movie , build gaps and chaotic spaces. Result - stiffness. The dialogs are artificial. The story is unclear. The myths are ink traces. And the consolation is presence of Anamaria Marinca. The recipes of ambiguous reality is wrong applicate. But the details , the presume atmosphere, the real good intentions are not denied. A film. About shadows of an existence.

rnl-otto 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.

Lost_in_La_Mancha from an anglo-centric and a male-centric point of view, this movie sucks, of course...from any other point of view, The Countess is a very well orchestrated piece of story-telling.a dark portrait of a dark age. a tale of love and madness. but did our emotions evolved so much as our techniques?as it starts: "history is the tale told by the victors. who are the victors? barbaric warriors, mad kings and greedy traitors. mainly most of our history is made of fables fabricated by those glorious victors."as till today, history is male's victory... here you got a female's tale... see for yourself. i can only tell: i dove into it