Vourdalak - the story of the original vampire

[Cremildo]

An edgy new voice within the world of French genre, Adrien Beau worked as a designer and scenographer for the likes of Dior, John Galliano and Agnes B before making his feature debut with the offbeat vampire movie “Vourdalak.”

Produced by Judith-Lou Levy at Les Films du Bal, “Vourdalak” will world premiere at Venice Critics’ Week and will likely be one of its boldest entries. At a time when horror has become a mainstream genre overloaded with special effects, “Vourdalak” couldn’t be more radical. Lensed in Super 16, the film’s central character is a vampire patriarch named Gorcha, played by a marionette that Beau operates and lends his voice to.

In an interview with Variety ahead of the festival, Beau says he got the idea for the film after he and Levy came across “La Famille du Vourdalak,” a strange vampire novella penned by Alexeï Konstantinovitch Tolstoï, published in 1884.

“‘La Famille du Vourdalak’ was written 40 years before ‘Dracula,’ which manufactured this image of an aristocratic vampire in his castle. But as this novella shows it, the original vampire was a lower class countryman,” says Beau, who penned the film with Hadrien Bouvier. “In literature, vampires and zombies are the same, but it’s cinema that has given them a different social rank: zombies are commoners, bums, while vampires are aristocrats. In our film we turn the tables, we follow an aristocrat who finds himself among peasants who happen to be vampires.”

He also infused “Vourdalak” with his artistic skills, on display through his previous two short films: “La Petite Sirene,” a black-and-white fantasy film shot in Super 8, and “Les condiments irreguliers,” shot in Super 16 and loosely inspired by the life of the 17th century arisocrat Marquise de Brinvilliers.

Even if it’s inspired by a published material, “Vourdalak” is in many ways a personal film for Beau, as it brings together his “passion for 19th century dark romanticism and puppetry.” [+]