| The Vourdalak | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Adrien Beau |
| Screenplay by | Hadrien Bouvier Adrien Beau |
| Starring | Kacey Mottet Klein Ariane Labed |
| Cinematography | David Chizallet |
| Edited by | Alan Jobart |
| Music by | Maïa Xifaras Martin Le Nouvel |
Release date |
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| Country | France |
The Vourdalak (French : Le Vourdalak) is a 2023 French horror-drama film co-written and directed by Adrien Beau, at his feature film debut. It premiered at the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival.
In 18th-century Eastern Europe, a French courtier and envoy of the King of France, Marquis Jacques Antoine, knocks on a stranger's door in the middle of the night, having lost his horse and companions through being robbed. The stranger does not let him inside, but advises him to go to the house of Gorcha. On his way through the forest the following morning, Jacques Antoine sees a woman singing, but she leaves at his approach. He meets a young man, Piotr, who is hostile at first but grudgingly and silently takes him to the house of Gorcha. The other residents are the woman Jacques Antoine had seen earlier (Sdenka), a woman named Anja and a young boy, Vlad.
Gorcha's elder son, Jegor, arrives home, having spent the past month seeking revenge against the Turks who had pillaged the village. He introduces Jacques Antoine to the family - Piotr and Sdenka are his siblings, Anja his wife, and Vlad his son. Jegor finds that Gorcha is missing, and the siblings explain that he left in order to fight the Turks, and that he had said that if he had not returned within 6 days it would be because he had been killed in battle; if, however, he should return after 6 days have elapsed, he would have become a vourdalak and the family should not let him in. Jegor dismisses this as absurd. He explains to Jacques Antoine that he knows where a horse can be found, but that it will have to wait until the next day.
Jacques Antoine asks Anja what a vourdalak is, but she claims not to know. She explains that Sdenka fell in love with a previous traveller, and because everyone in the area knows, she is now unable to get married. Jacques Antoine approaches her and walks with her in the woods; she too will not be drawn on vourdalaks. He aggressively tries to seduce her but she tricks him into almost falling off a cliff. She shows him the grave of the traveller whom she had loved; they had arranged to meet at the cliff to run away together, but someone found out and killed him.
That evening, 6 days since Gorcha left, Anja spots him lying on the ground at the edge of the forest. Piotr's dog will not stop barking at him, and Jegor compels Piotr to shoot the dog with Gorcha's arquebus. Gorcha's hand is corpse-like and skeletal, and when he removes the cloth covering his face, it is ghoulish and skull-like. Vlad finds his grandfather's appearance amusing, and Gorcha expresses his fondness for the boy. Gorcha reveals the severed head of the leader of the band of Turks, whom Jegor had failed to kill.
Before bed, Jacques Antoine spies on the residents of the house; Sdenka catches him, and from then on her coldness towards him is restored. He has nightmares about the vourdalak. The following day, Gorcha/the vourdalak is nowhere to be seen and Vlad is unwell. Jegor goes to look for Gorcha; meanwhile, Sdenka and Piotr, with Jacque Antoine's help, sharpen a stake and perform a ritual on Vlad. Piotr explains that vourdalaks prefer to drink the blood of their close family, those they love the most. Jegor arrives in the middle of the ritual, and angrily dismisses the idea that their father has become a vourdalak as an old wives' tale. He is drinking heavily.
That night, Jacques Antoine sees Vlad, dressed in white, walking outside. He catches up with him in the woods; the boy appears to be sleepwalking. At that moment, a horrible sound is heard, and the vourdalak is revealed to be standing nearby chewing on his shroud. Jacques Antoine attempts to protect the boy from the vourdalak, who hurls him against a tree before drinking the blood of his grandson. Jacques Antoine awakens the next morning and emerges from the woods to find a distraught Anja cradling the body of her dead son, while Jegor digs a grave.
During the funeral, Piotr and Sdenka encourage Jegor to drive the stake through the boy's heart; just as he is about to do so, the vourdalak appears and reproaches the family for the loss of the boy. Once again, Jegor does not seem to realise that his father has become a vourdalak. Piotr attempts to attack the vourdalak with the stake, but loses his nerve. The vourdalak implies to Sdenka that it was he himself who was responsible for shooting her lover.
The vourdalak compels Jacques Antoine and Sdenka to dance for him. Piotr, who has been criticised by his brother and father for what they perceive as his effeminacy, appears wearing lipstick and a garland of flowers, preparing to kill the vourdalak with the stake; the vourdalak, however, shoots him in the head before he can do so. Jegor blames Jacques Antoine for the misfortunes that have befallen his family, and beats him. He tells him that he will be given a horse the next morning, and then must leave and never return; if he does, Jegor will kill him.
Jegor leaves Jacques Antoine bound in the cellar for the night, and he is woken by Vlad calling for his mother. He sees through the window the boy walking across the garden towards Anja; Jacques Antoine tries to warn her to stay away, but she rushes to her son. They embrace, and he drinks her blood. In the morning, Sdenka approaches Jacques Antoine but mistakes him for her dead brother, declaring that the time has come for her to throw herself from the cliff as her brother was the only thing keeping her alive. Jacques Antoine attempts to persuade her not to, promising to take her to the French court, but she sadly refuses and leaves behind a map of Europe which she had taken from him.
Jegor and Anja, now a vourdalak, give Jacques Antoine a horse and he rushes through the woods but cannot find Sdenka. Returning to the house that evening, he hears her singing through a window, and tries to convince her once again to leave. She seduces him; as blood drips onto the floor, he sees in the mirror that her arms are skeletal - he looks down and sees the vourdalak, who has been drinking his blood. Jacques Antoine stakes the vourdalak and staggers from the room. He stumbles into the dining room to find Jegor at the head of the table, with his dead brother and vourdalak wife and son seated around him. He runs back into Sdenka's room, where the vourdalak apologises to him and says that had she met him earlier, her life would have been different. He sets the room on fire and rides away as the house burns.
At dawn he arrives at the cliff and finds Sdenka standing at the edge. He implores her not to jump, saying that he does not have much time left, but that she can be free. He gives her his horse and the map of Europe, and deliberately falls backwards off the cliff. Sdenka rides away on the horse, chewing a shroud. The film ends with an extract from the diary of a French duchess describing taking in a female stranger matching Sdenka's description.
The film is based on the 1839 Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's gothic novella by The Family of the Vourdalak . [1] [2] It is shot in Super 16mm. [3] The soundtrack is inspired to Nino Rota's score in Fellini's Casanova . [3]
The film premiered in the International Critics' Week section at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. [4]
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