Les Lèvres rouges / Daughter of Darkness (2020 restoration Blue Underground)

Harry Kümel: Les Lèvres rouges / Daughter of Darkness (BE/FR/DE 1971) with John Karlen (Stefan), Danielle Ouimet (Valérie) and Delphine Seyrig (la contessa Báthory).

La vestale di Satana / Daughters of Darkness

    BE/FR/DE 1971. Prod.: Paul Collet, Henry Lange per Showking Films, Maya Films, Roxy Film, Cine Vog Films. 

    Director: Harry Kümel. Scen.: Pierre Drouot, Jean Ferry, Harry Kümel. F.: Edward Van den Enden. M.: Gust Verschueren. Scgf.: Françoise Hardy. Mus.: François de Roubaix. Int.: Delphine Seyrig (la contessa Báthory), Danielle Ouimet (Valérie), John Karlen (Stefan), Fons Rademakers (la madre), Andrea Rau (Ilona Harczy), Paul Esser (il receptionist), Georges Jamin (poliziotto in pensione), Joris Collet (il direttore dell’hotel). Col. 108 min

    Loc: Bruges, Bruxelles, Meise, Ostende. - Koningin Astridlaan 7, Ostende (L'Hôtel des Thermes).

    The film is in English although there is also French, German and Dutch .

    Not released in Finland or Sweden.

    Restored in 4K in 2020 by Blue Underground at Augustus Color laboratory, from the original image negative and the magnetic original mix. Grading supervised by Harry Kümel.

    DCP with English subtitles from: Cinematek. E-subtitles in Italian.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Delphine Seyrig, Just Another Sorceress

    Viewed at Cinema Lumière - Sala Scorsese, 27 June 2024

Juliette Armantier (Il Cinema Ritrovato Catalogue 2024): "The Vampire or The Actual Charme of the Bourgeoisie. With sets fittingly designed for the Belgian School of the Bizarre, the cold Ostend seafront is the backdrop for a game of seduction and the supernatural."

"L’Hôtel des Thermes, where a large part of this vampire story unfolds, transposes the customary Gothic castle to a 1930s neo-classical building, reminiscent of a Paul Delvaux painting, which Delphine Seyrig’s ghostly central character appears to have stepped straight out of."

"She agreed to work with Kümel thanks to Alain Resnais, her partner at the time, for whom she had played an entirely different ghostly role in Last Year at Marienbad."

"In Les Lèvres rouges, originally intended to be a simple film, all blood and eroticism, Seyrig embodies the quintessential vampire-like image: a powerful, mysterious and unattainable woman who seems to come from another era. A vampire and a bourgeoise, she feeds off the other and disposes of him, embracing the darkest desires as a metaphor for social and sexual control, exerting her power of fascination over men and women alike."

"Lesbianism is a timeworn fantasy in erotic films and an inherent theme associated with the vampire, that adds another transgressive element: attraction to a monster, to a member of a higher social class, and ultimately to a woman."

"Countess Elisabeth Báthory, played by Delphine Seyrig, is a world away from the historic character that inspired her, the aristocratic Hungarian, who reportedly bathed in the blood of young virgins in order never to age. This is more Duras than Hammer; here, she is a bourgeois and decadent figure gliding about on grey, melancholic sets, red lips against a silver gown from days gone by, bedecked in sparkles from the omnipresent star filter."

" But what stays with you is her voice. A deep, weary drawl that casts a spell, bewitching young lovers, even as it speaks of sordid murders. And well beyond the 70s, like a ghost or a vampire imprinted on film, she retains her complete fascination; that haunting voice is Delphine Seyrig in the flesh, almost as much as the actress herself. " Juliette Armantier (Il Cinema Ritrovato Catalogue 2024)

AA: Harry Kümel was in Bologna in person, but unfortunately not in this screening of Les Lèvres rouges. We saw a digital transfer of a restoration supervised by Kümel - thus presumably a definitive version of a movie of which multiple editions exist. 

Belgium is a homeland of surrealism as strongly as France and arguably even more so, as I learned this year visiting the great centenary of surrealism exhibitions in Brussels.

Under their spell I registered Kümel's affinities with Paul Delvaux (the deserted streets) and René Magritte (the hotel facade at night) as well as mutual roots in Gothic, Léon Dardenne (Déesse de la lumière Eon) and Baudelaire (Le Vampire). Kümel is not an imitator. He creates a unique oneiric ambience in this nightmare movie.

Les Lèvres rouges is a perfectly crafted visual experience, a nocturnal exploration of erotic finesse and brutal carnage. Like all female vampire movies, it is a queer horror saga. Delphine Seyrig is the most formidable incarnation of Countess Élisabeth Báthory in the history of the cinema: elegant, intelligent, seductive, inscrutable, death personified, desolation per definition: teenage girls serially butchered, sexual urges aroused for the sake of murder.

The only one who can be compared with Seyrig is Sybille Schmitz in Vampyr, inspired by Carmilla written by Sheridan Le Fanu. Let's also remember Schmitz playing with Louise Brooks in Tagebuch einer Verlorenen and the habitus of Andrea Rau as Ilona modeled after Brooks. Not forgetting Fährmann Maria, the last straggler of Weimar fantastique glory deep in the Nazi era. And Rosel Zech in Fassbinder's Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, inspired by the life of Sybille Schmitz.

The visual concept is highly stylized. The cinematographer Edward Van den Enden had also worked for Rademakers and Tati. There is an affinity with a glossy fashion magazine look. The sex scenes are warmly shot for visual beauty.

Because of an overlap with Maya miriga I had to leave early. I saw the demise of Stefan (John Karlen) but missed the final twist involving Valerie (Danielle Ouimet) as the reincarnation of Élisabeth Báthory.