Ageing and death are perhaps the foundation of all horror, but this droll French chamber piece, adapted from an 1839 novella by Aleksey Tolstoy, puts a devious spin on that. The titular “vourdalak” – a kind of Mitteleuropean vampire – is Gorcha, wizened patriarch of a family of forest-dwelling peasants, who is driven to feed on the blood of those he loves the most. With the film incarnating this beastie in the form of a toothy puppet resembling Norman Tebbit (voiced by director Adrian Beau), it’s a cruel but funny metaphor for parental authority and late-life dependency. Obviously they didn’t have assisted living in early modern Bohemia.
Arriving in the midst of this folkloric spat is Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein), a nervous envoy for the French king who has been waylaid en route. Advised to seek help at the house of the venerable Gorcha, the aristocrat only finds his children present: Turk-slaying scion Jegor (Grégoire Colin), effete second son Piotr (Vassili Schneider, also seen in the new Count of Monte Cristo) and enigmatic black-sheep daughter Sdenka (Greek new wave luminary Ariane Labed). D’Urfé must wait for a new horse; Gorcha has departed to pursue the latest Turkish raiders and, as he warns his kinfolk, should he return after more than six days it will surely be in undead form.
