the marquis's exquisite taste - The Vourdalak (2023)

IT'S A PUPPET!

More vampire films should feature a cunty little marquis with access to the world’s most durable setting spray, METHINKS.

Spoilers, as per usual. Unfortunately, the dog dies in this one too, although in slightly less gory fashion than in last week’s movie.

Le Vourdalak/The Vourdalak

Based on: The Family of the Vourdalak by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy

Directed by: Adrien Beau

Starring: Kacey Mottet Klein, Ariane Labed, Grégoire Colin, Vassili Schneider, Claire Duburcq, Gabriel Pavie, Adrien Beau

Running time: 91 minutes

Original release date: 25 October 2023

the plot, in brief

18th-century Eastern Europe, country unknown. Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfe (Mottet Klein) has lost his horse and his companions in a robbery. Alone and on foot, he treks through a dark forest, having been advised to make his way to the house of a man named Gorcha (Beau).

Upon his arrival at Gorcha’s house, he is met (not very kindly) by Gorcha’s extended family, including his daughter Sdenka (Labed) and younger son Piotr (Schneider). His eldest son, Jegor (Colin), arrives home, having spent the last month out for revenge on the Turks who ransacked their village. Jegor is informed that Gorcha has left, also to fight the Turks, and that he is not to be let in should he return after six days, for it would mean he had become a vourdalak and the family would be in grave danger.

When Gorcha is spotted lying at the edge of the forest, on the evening of the sixth day, the family make the mistake of taking him back in, and the Marquis is soon dragged into the terrifying gradual demise of his hosts.

but first: what is a vourdalak, please?

As per Wikipedia:

Wurdulac, also spelled wurdalak, verdilak or vurdulak, is a kind of vampire in the Slavic folklore mythology. Some Western sources define it as a type of "Russian vampire" that must consume the blood of its loved ones and convert its whole family. This notion is based apparently on Alexey K. Tolstoy's novella The Family of the Vourdalak, telling the story of one such Slavic family.

Now that we’ve established this key fact, let’s move on to…

six things I rather liked about The Vourdalak (2023)

the aforementioned cunty little marquis

We first meet the French Marquis Jacques Saturnin du Antoine d’Urfe (the Marquis from here out, I am absolutely not typing this name out in full every time) in the middle of the night, asking for shelter at the door of a stranger. He’s turned away with the advice to seek out the house of a man named Gorcha in the morning. The following morning, with his fancy dandy makeup still intact (despite having spent the entire night outside in a random Eastern European forest, seriously, WHAT IS YOUR SETTING SPRAY I NEED TO KNOW), he arrives at Gorcha’s home and walks straight into a family dynamic that could best be described as Tense.

Kacey Mottet Klein pitches his performance as the Marquis perfectly, being at once quite pathetic (especially in his interactions with Sdenka, although there is a true affection there which shines through in the final scenes) and suitably baffled by this family he’s intruded on.

Greek Weird Wave royalty Ariane Labed

As a confirmed Yorgos Lanthimos fan, I am well-acquainted with his wife, actress and director Ariane Labed and here, she puts down a stunning performance as Sdenka, Gorcha’s daughter. We first meet her as the Marquis spots her, dancing in the forest like she’s communing with something beyond the veil. Her eyes are strikingly framed in thick black eyeliner. Her dress makes her look like she is one with the forest.

She later confides in the Marquis (who, much to her bemusement, immediately and aggressively starts coming on to her) that she had planned to flee the family with the man she had fallen in love with. Waiting at the cliffside for him to join her, she heard a gunshot pierce the air (we later find out, or are at least led to think, that Gorcha shot her lover). She returned home and went to bed, heartbroken, tainted in the eyes of her family. Later, when the Marquis is tied up in the basement, having already watched Jegor’s wife Anya (Duburcq) be bitten and turned by her infected son, Sdenka approaches him, covered in the blood of her brother, the one ally she had left (Piotr, who is heavily queer-coded and also the only other person who believes in the existence of the vourdalak, is shot point blank by Gorcha, whose bony fingers wield a musket). As if in a trance, Sdenka tells the Marquis that she is going to throw herself from the cliff.

Labed is a striking presence, moving like her body is haunted by her own grief. I hope she comes to play into the horror sandbox again soon, because I think she’d be formidable regardless of which role she takes.

the fact that Gorcha is played by, and I cannot stress this enough, A MARIONETTE

The Marquis joins the family at the dinner table, awaiting Gorcha’s return. It’s Anya who spots him, lying lifeless at the edge of the forest. Jegor picks him up and carries him to the table and, surprisingly, Gorcha comes to life.

I went into this movie having full knowledge that Gorcha is being played by a marionette (voiced by director Adrien Beau). It’s on the Wikipedia summary, it’s mentioned in a number of Letterboxd reviews, it’s basically common knowledge that Gorcha is a marionette. NEVER THE BLOODY LESS, when Gorcha stutters to life, slowly revealing that he looks like the result of a Frankenstein experiment on your biology class’s resident anatomical skeleton, I felt a kind of gleeful terror enter my soul.

LOOK AT HIM. This is like if they un-yassified Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok in Nosferatu. Watching him bite his grandson, every single one of his movements looking like someone’s playing Human: Fall Flat with him live on set, I am quietly in awe that they managed to make him truly terrifying, even when he’s glamoured the Marquis into having evil puppet sex with him.

Hold on, we’re getting to it.

the look of the film

Shot in Super 16MM, the film manages to look both artfully grainy and beautifully vivid. The lush, ominous greens of the forest, the dark of the night, it’s just a gorgeous movie to look at and it adds to the dark sadness of the storytelling.

the shrouds

Usually, when a character in a horror movie has been infected with something (bitten by a zombie or vampire or whatever virus), they will be exhibiting a tell, a definitive sign that they are about to turn. In The Vourdalak, Gorcha, Anya and Sdenka all are seen nibbling on their shrouds, which is a small but very effective detail and a novel way of portraying that tell.

the ending

Sdenka has gone missing, and Anya (now a vourdalak) and Jegor give the Marquis a horse. He rides off into the forest, looking for Sdenka, and returns to the house at night when he cannot find her. Hearing singing coming from one of the bedrooms, the Marquis seemingly discovers Sdenka, and tries to convince her to leave with him. Instead, she seduces him into bed and what starts as a rather hot sex scene turns into a nightmare as the Marquis notices blood dripping on the floor. He turns and looks into the mirror, where he does not see Sdenka’s hands on his flesh. Looking back, he is instead confronted with Gorcha, who has been drinking his blood.

The Marquis manages to stake Gorcha, before setting the place and its inhabitants, now all vourdalaks, on fire. On the verge of turning, the Marquis rides away and finds Sdenka at the edge of the cliff, ready to jump. He tells her the following:

Don’t leave the world without knowing it. It’s vast and surprising. It will please you.

He hands her his map and tells him to head to the court in France, before he lets himself fall over the edge of the cliff. Sdenka rides off on his horse, but just before the screen cuts to black, she is seen nibbling her shroud.

We are then presented with a diary entry from a French Duchess, who speaks of a most peculiar woman arriving on her doorstep.

The Vourdalak is an absurdist slow burn horror which draws you in with its lush evil and tells you a story of a family who, despite Jegor’s claims that the Marquis’s arrival was the start of their agonies, was already imploding. It’s such a skillfully human story with a couple of brilliant performances anchoring the more absurd elements into a painful, horrific truth: often, family will end up hurting you the most.