Le Vourdalak – review

Director: Adrien Beau

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Based on Tolstoy’s the Family of the Vourdalak, this is a really rather interesting French take on the story. It keeps the film in a period setting and puts some twists into the story to keep the audience guessing, adds in a neat moment of lore and then tops it all by having the antagonist represented by a puppet – this should take the viewer out of the film but, as one accepts it, the conceit works really well making the vourdalak creepy and unheimlich.

Kacey Mottet Klein as d'Urfé 

It starts with the Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d'Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein) banging on a door in the dark. He is a French envoy and his escort has been killed by bandits. The occupant (Erwan Ribard) tells him the door will not be opened (whether due to fear of Turks or the supernatural one can only guess at). D'Urfé is advised to go through the woods, recognised as dangerous, until he gets to the house of Old Gorcha (Adrien Beau) – there he might find help and a horse.

spying on Sdenka

As day breaks, we see that d'Urfé is a “powdered courtier” and the look, with powder, wig and beauty spot, serves as a nice contrast against the more rustic family especially through the lens of a more modern sensibility when exploring the film and the undercurrent themes of toxic-patriarchy and queerness. He hears singing and spies a maiden, Sdenka (Ariane Labed) but she becomes aware of him when he stands on a twig and she quickly vanishes into the woods.

Ariane Labed as Sdenka

Continuing through the woods something growls in the undergrowth but, when it appears, it is a friendly dog that runs ahead. He reaches a woman, or so is presented through clothing and accessories, but is revealed to be the male Piotr (Vassili Schneider) who, though taciturn, guides him past a skeleton festooned attacked wagon, graves and to a house. D'Urfé picks up a dropped earing that the young man had been wearing. In the house is Sdenka, Piotr’s sister, Anja (Claire Duburcq), their sister-in-law, and the latter’s son Vlad (Gabriel Pavie).

the family

Soon Anja’s husband, Jegor (Grégoire Colin), returns. Recently the area was raided by Turks and, after defending the house, Jegpr and a few others pursued them. He suggests they killed ten Turks but the leader, Alibek, escaped. He asks where Gorcha is and is told that he went out alone to pursue the Turks and left message that, should he not return by six on the sixth day to forget he was their father. Jegor, convinced Gorcha will return, orders a feast to be cooked.

d'Urfé & Sdenka

Having spoken to Anja, who mentions Sdenka’s disgrace as she fell in love with a stranger, d'Urfé goes out to help Sdenka pick blackberries. Now I write notes as I watch films and did mention in my notes that Ariane Labed’s performance brought the stylised works of Jean Rollin to mind. At one point she almost lures him off a cliff, she explains it is the place where she will finally end it, and shows him the grave of her lover – shot when their love was discovered, we assume by Gorcha. For his part, d'Urfé attempts to replicate both toxic masculinity and class privilege, attempting to pressure her into sex. It does become apparent that this isn’t what d'Urfé genuinely is, coding as bisexual and a romantic later.

Gorcha revealed

The clock strikes as the family eat and, unlike the story, Gorcha does not knock. Rather they eat al fresco and he is spotted collapsed nearby. He is swaddled in coat, scarf and hat at first and orders the barking dog killed. It becomes apparent that the cruelty he displays is not down to being vourdalak but (and foreshadowed with the murder of the lover) actually part of his enduring character. He shows the head of Alibek, which he took, and is revealed as a cadaverous dead thing. Jegor, his manly son and inheritor of Gorcha’s toxic patriarchy, cannot see him for what he is. Piotr, being gender fluid and therefore outside the patriarchal pecking order, sees things for what they are.

folk cure

The story follows the original, mostly, with Gorcha preying first on Vlad, the vourdalak preying on those they love. As I mentioned there are some twists to this I won’t spoil. We get a nice folk horror moment of an attempt to exorcise Vlad and the necessary components for dealing with a vourdalak are hawthorn, garlic and an aspen stake. Neatly added into the tale is the idea of the chewing dead, the shroud-eater, which allows for a nice tell.

stake

The photography is, generally, beautiful and the costuming works really well. All the performances are strong and the film really does draw you in, to the point that the puppet Gorcha (and the fact that no-one seems to recognise it as cadaverous) does not undermine the experience. Regular readers will be aware that the Family of the Vourdalak is a favourite vampire story of mine and I love to see adaptations, this one put in enhancements to the patriarchy themes that are dimly there in the original and certainly did not disappoint. 8 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.