Director/Gorcha Conceived and Realised by Adrien Beau, Screenplay – Adrien Beau & Hadrien Bouvier, Based on the Short Story The Family of the Vourdalak (1839) by Aleksei K. Tolstoy, Producers – Judith Lou Levy, Lola Pacchioni & Marco Pacchioni, Photography – David Chizallet, Music – Martin Le Nouvel & Maia Xifaras, Visual Effects – Compagnie Generale des Effets Visuels (Supervisor – Jeremie Leroux), Makeup Effects – Franck Limon Duparcmeur, Production Design – Thibault Pinto. Production Company – The Jokers Film/WTFilms/OCS/Amazon Prime Video/Le Region Occitaine en Partenariat avec le CNC/Le Department de L’Aveyron/Cinemage 17/Le Centre National du Cinema et de l’Image Animee/Le Founds de Dotation Agnes B./Le Procirep-Angoa.
Cast
Kacey Mottet Klein (Marquis Jacques Saturnin du Antoine d’Urfe), Ariane Labed (Sdenka), Gregoire Colin (Jegor), Vassili Schneider (Piotr), Claire Duburcq (Anja), Gabriel Pavie (Vlad), Erwan Ribard (The Hermit)
Plot
Eastern Europe, the 18th Century. The Marquis Jacques Saturnin du Antoine d’Urfe, an ambassador of the king of France, is travelling through the region but has lost his luggage. He begs help and is directed to find Gorcha, who lives in the forest. He meets Gorcha’s daughter Sdenka who takes him to the house where the rest of the family are waiting the return of Gorcha who left to go hunting the Turks. Gorcha has warned them to be wary if he returns after six days as he will have become a vourdalak. d’Urfe wants to know what a vourdalak is but gets no answers. Gorcha then returns after the six day period but the oldest son Jegor dismisses the warnings and insists on letting him in. However, Gorcha has changed and become a vampire creature that proceeds to feed on the blood of his family.
The Vourdalak was a feature-length debut for French director Adrien Beau. Beau adapts the novella The Family of the Vourdalak (1839) by Aleksei K. Tolstoy (1883-1945). Aleksei, a second cousin of the more well-known Leo Tolstoy of War and Peace (1867) fame. The Family of the Vourdalak was previously adapted to the screen as the classic The Wurdulak episode of Mario Bava’s anthology Black Sabbath (1963) starring Boris Karloff as the father.
The film absorbs us in a slow building mood. There is a good deal of naturalistic landscape photography. And the film stays in period – throughout Kacey Mottet Klein wears breeches, hose, frock coat and in most of the scenes has his face powdered white with a mouche (fake beauty spot) as per the French fashion of the day. From the opening scene where Kacey Mottet Klein is turned away at an inn (?) and told to seek help in the forest, the tone of the film seems unsettlingly off.
The Gorcha puts the bite on Gabriel Pavie
The Vourdalak suddenly gains a whole lot of creepy effect with the return of the father and the outdoors dinner held in his honour. Firstly, it is not entirely clear how the father is portrayed but it is not by an actor and instead by what looks like a puppet (created by director Adrien Beau), which resembles a geriatric version of Count Orlock in Nosferatu (1922). There is an unnerving scene where they sit at the dinner table and the father demands that the son Vassili Schneider shoot the family dog because its barking annoys him and then tosses the severed head of the Turk leader on the table.
The rest of the film gains the same kind of unsettlingly uncanny effect where you are not sure what is going to happen. Adrien Beau gives us a series of intensely eerie scene throughout – of Gorcha seen reflected as a silhouette on the wall amid flashes of lightening or seen scuttling along the ceiling, or of borrowing the trick from Dracula (1897) of the vampire climbing the outside wall of the house to get in a window. The story is extended well out beyond Tolstoy. The scenes with the family slowly being whittled down have some undeniable effect, before a wonderfully saddening ending.
