– The German director discusses the lavish aesthetics of her new film, starring a fanged Isabelle Huppert
(© Margaux Gatti/Luxembourg City Film Festival)
Isabelle Huppert has never been more iconic than in the role of vamp countess Elizabeth Báthory in the new film by renowned German director Ulrike Ottinger, The Blood Countess [+see also:
film review
interview: Ulrike Ottinger
film profile]. Draped in velvet gowns and sporting blinding jewellery, she floats through a mysterious Vienna in search of her next blood-fix. Cineuropa caught up with Ottinger on the eve of the film’s Luxembourgish premiere at LuxFilmFest, fresh off its Berlinale screening, to discuss the long journey from the first version of the script to the finished product, the role of the costumes and the queering of a legend.
Cineuropa: It’s been nearly 30 years since you wrote the script. What is the best thing about making the film now, in 2026?
Ulrike Ottinger: I wrote the screenplay in 1998, and then we started to gather some money for it in the early 2000s, but we didn’t get all we needed. Then, we started again in 2014, but unfortunately, the film was a little bit expensive… Two years ago, we were finally able to bring everything together, so I could finally make it. Of course, I looked at what I wrote in 1998 very carefully again, and I changed some things because we are in another world now.
What did you change?
The basis is absolutely the same, and so is the structure, but for example, the role of the young rebel in the family [Rudi Bubi von Strudl, played by Thomas Schubert] is bigger. The place is the same, still Vienna – it has a fantastic history, which goes back further than the Baroque era – and while this isn’t a historical flick, it plays with the history of the locations and the architecture. It was interesting to work intensely with all of that.
Meanwhile, Isabelle Huppert’s roles have changed a lot since the 2000s, from more inner-focused, psychological ones to quirkier ones. It seems to me that everything, including her fashion collaboration with Balenciaga, has led her to become the Blood Countess. Back then, we talked a lot about the film, and she kept saying: “I don’t know how to play this [part]. It’s not a psychological role; I don’t have it in me.” And I said, “You are not only the countess; you are the empress. You can pass through walls. You can do whatever you want; you are a dictator. You are manipulating your surroundings, and you have control over everything.” She played it just like that. But there are still some treats in the film, tiny moments where she seems to have forgotten something from her past, and these are comical. When you have a role like hers, though, you can’t keep yourself in a state of complete tunnel vision; you need those little moments [of comic relief]. It became something wonderful!
It’s always impressive to see how she commands the screen every time, and how tall and big she seems in roles. This one amplifies it through the costumes. How did you shape her character through the wardrobe?
I always start with the image, and if you were to see my screenplays, you’d find out that they’re like books – they include drawings, photographs I’ve taken, material I’ve collected… My costume designer [Jorge Jara Guarda] also has a sense for this way of working, but I prepared for over a year on my own before I got him involved. So, by then, I had all of these costumes in mind, with their designs, colours and fabrics, too, and I gave it all to him. We worked on each figure, whether bigger or smaller, so that it would be completely stylised.
History has made the countess a scapegoat and a murderer of women, and while your film is not revisionist, there is a lot to be said about the character’s attraction to women and her attitude towards men. Could you speak to the gender politics at play?
We don’t know if she was a killer or if she was framed for it. I looked at the documents during my research, but this is not important for the film. Instead, it’s the fantasies you have about her and also the legends around her – everyone who has interviewed me has told me about a different interpretation of the film, and I like that very much. As in all of my movies, I like to have this kind of protagonist who invites associations and fantasies. Here, the Blood Countess is clearly attracted to a woman, but she likes to keep her family close as well. When her nephew revolts and chooses to be a vegetarian, she wants to make him stronger, but it doesn’t work. So, there’s this tension between her ideas about the family and the reality of it all, just as there are a lot of similarities to the present day as well.
