While Paris is in the spotlight for hosting the Summer Olympic Games, there’s another reason to check out France this week: Director Adrien Beau’s feature film debut, “The Vourdalak” is available (as of today) to stream online.
And mon Dieu, you don’t want to miss it.
“The Vourdalak” is a film that’s hard to pin down: Beautifully filmed, it’s equal parts horror, gothic, drama – and a love story thrown in for good measure.
It’s the story of the Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé, a diplomatic envoy to the king of France, who is robbed and left horseless in a forest in the middle of nowhere. He is reluctantly given shelter by a strange family who is awaiting the return of their patriarch, Gorcha, who left the manor to fight the Turks who ransacked their village.
Before he left, he warned his family: “Wait six days for me. If, after those six days I have not returned, say a prayer in memory of me, for I shall have been killed in battle. But if ever, and may God preserve you, I were to return after six days have passed, I enjoin you to forget I was your father and to refuse me entry whatever I may say or do. For then I shall be no more than an accursed Vourdalak.” (A vourdalak is a type of vampire in Eastern European/Russian folklore.)
It’s no spoiler to say that Gorcha returns and all hell breaks loose – but that’s all you’re getting out of us.
The film is based on the novella, “The Family of the Vourdalak,” written by Alexei Tolstoy in 1839, and adapted for film by Beau and Hadrien Bouvier.
“The Vourdalak” was originally released in 2023, but was just rereleased in limited theaters late last month in the United States by Oscilloscope Laboratories, which was cofounded by the late Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.
Beau said “The Vourdalak” was filmed in southern France, although he originally had his sights set on Sarajevo, Bosnia, but France offered the production money to film in the country. As his first feature, he said that while the filming had its challenges – including freezing weather – the cast and crew made up for it.
“It was bit challenging for me, because we had only five weeks,” Beau said in a phone interview last week. “I was a bit stressed, but the team were very nice. We’re all very friendly to each other. We’re just locked up in the in the forest for five weeks, so it was more like friends in the end.”
Then there was the character of Gorcha, which was actually a puppet, voiced by Beau, which provided its own set of challenges.
But all of this obviously worked out: “The Vourdalak” is currently sitting at a 95% Tomatometer and 100% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a pretty significant achievement for any horror movie.
And for Beau, the goal of the film is, of course, to scare and unsettle audiences, which it does on every level: The acting, the location, the Marquis’ adherence to his court makeup, Gorcha – hell, even the fact that the film is French with English subtitles further adds to the claustrophobic feeling of isolation brought on by the constant tension-filled air of the film. He also, though, wants the audience to feel something other than fright, he said, especially by the love story of the Marquis and Gorcha’s daughter, Sdenka.
“I want them to be horrified, but I want them to be a little bit moved,” he said. “I was much more focused on this love story than anything else when I wrote the movie.”
katie@durangoherald.com