Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Expected more

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie rocks because it manages to be both a lavish, complex period movie and a psychological horror movie at the same time. Julie Delpy does a fantastic job in the role of a complex woman from a brutal period in European history, and her performance somehow gracefully manages to be both sympathetic and monstrous. Bathory is one of history's most prolific and sadistic mass murderers, but historians are ultimately unsure of who she really was, and to what extent she was responsible for the atrocities for which she is credited. Most agree that the whole "beauty treatment bloodbath" thing is a myth made up by later generations to spice up the story, so I was surprised that a telling supposedly rooted in fact ended up going that route, but I loved the idea of a Bathory who is a real person and not just a 2-dimensional fiend. Great sets, costumes, and performances from a well-written script make The Countess an engaging and informative portrait of a woman whose vanity and blood lust have become the stuff of legend.

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.

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.

I hope I don't upset a lot of good folks when I say that American film makers just can't make top quality period drama. Westerns being the obvious exception. The American accent is a relatively recent thing and it simply doesn't work in any kind of believable form when coming from the mouth of a sixteenth century character. It's the accent of cops, hoodlums, coke adverts and hamburgers. That said, there was a great deal effort put into this film to get things looking and feeling right for the period. However, all those efforts don't come anywhere near paying off. The Countess is a slowing moving, uninteresting mishmash of 'serious' actooors plying their trade within a risible script. It tries so hard to be a 'great' work and fails at every turn.Julie Delpy seems unaware of who or what she is. The countess is at times a lesbian lover, matriarch, wife, businesswoman, wreck, girl, woman and everything else you can think of... all in slow motion.William Hurt isn't given a chance with his script. His monstrous character is barely explored and his sidekick, sadomasochistic accomplice is just a daft cliché.Bathory (the other, recent version of this story) was simply terrible. This film is not a lot better in my opinion although it certainly improves a little when the pace picks up towards the end. But despite all of the money chucked at it, I found it barely watchable. A real shame. As for Erzebet Bathory, I think it would take someone of the stature of Roman Polanski to tell her story in a compelling, cinematic way. Keep away from this film. It's a stinker.