Blood on your lips

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Movie
German title Blood on your lips
Original title Les levres rouges
Country of production Belgium
Publishing year 1971
length 100 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Harry Kümel
script Harry Kümel
Pierre Drouot
Jean Ferry
Manfred R. Koehler
J. J. Amiel
production Paul Collet
Henry Lange
Ludwig Waldleitner
(not mentioned)
music François de Roubaix
camera Eduard van der Enden
cut August Verschueren
Denis Bonan
Hans Zeiler (anonymous)
occupation

The feature film Blood on the Lips ( Les lèvres rouges , 1971) by the Belgian Harry Kümel reflects on the theme of sexual and emotional power and powerlessness with horror, thriller and vampire motifs borrowed from the relevant genre films.

action

Stefan and Valerie have just secretly married and are making a short stop in a large, luxurious hotel in Ostend , which is empty except for the doorman outside of the season. Stefan is disturbed and has serious concerns that his mother will not approve of the marriage. Valerie asks him to finally let his mother know. In the late evening Countess Elizabeth Bathory arrives with her companion Ilona; the two show great interest in Valerie. The doorman swears Elizabeth looked just like she did when he was an elevator boy forty years ago ...

When the couple goes on a trip to Bruges , an onlooked crowd surrounds a doorway from which the police are removing the body of a murdered young woman. There are said to have been several similar murders - young girls found bloodless and with gashes on their necks. Stefan is clearly interested in the process; Valerie is troubled by his abnormal reaction, as well as by his fascination with the Countess, who keeps herself looking youthful by drinking the blood of virgins. He finally tells his mother over the phone that he has got married - it turns out that his "mother" on the other end of the line is a make-up, dandy-like, somewhat idiot older man. Stefan's behavior towards Valerie suddenly takes on violent forms. She packs up and leaves for the train station, where Elizabeth intercepts her and persuades her to return. Meanwhile, Ilona tries to seduce Stefan on the instructions of Elizabeth to show Valerie that he is unfaithful. She falls on his razor and is killed. Together, Elizabeth, Stefan and Valerie get their body out of the hotel and bury it on the beach. Then Elizabeth succeeds in seducing Valerie to have sex, and they kill Stefan. Finally Bathory and Valerie drive away in the car; When they are blinded by the rising sun, their car overturns and Bathory is impaled on a branch. Months later, a new young couple arrives at the hotel - Valerie takes care of them.

subjects

The characters do not show any easily understandable motivation for their actions. They are ruled by instincts and desire for one another, which is not expressed directly and rather manifests itself in uncontrollable outbursts. The film also deals with questions of power. One interpretation of Stefan's behavior is that Stefan wants to control Valerie, but suffers from not being the dominant in his relationship with her. The film is confusing in its message, but the focus is on a message: “ Relationships, whether straight or homo, with people or vampires, amount to power. Love is nothing more than a meaningless stimulus of the new that wears off. One remains either as a ruler or as a ruled. "

The film is valued by lesbian film critics for violating conventions of the lesbian vampire genre. This usually portrays the lesbian vampire as a threat to heterosexual normality to be defeated. Here, however, the straight relationship is unstable and threatening, while Bathory is the most lovable character in the film. She does not seduce Valerie with demoniac, but rather with a feminist-oriented criticism of Stefan, who sees Valerie as an object and wants to bring her under his control.

The mood is influenced by the fact that streets, hotels, trains and the beach are deserted and large parts of the film take place at night. One assessment of the character Elizabeth is: “ Seyrig dominates the film like a psychopathic Marlene Dietrich . “The figure of the Countess is based on the myth of the Blood Countess, which entwined around the historical figure of Elisabeth Báthory . The myth has served as inspiration for several films, including the Immoral Stories (1974).

Origin and Distribution

Since he did not count on government support for a film of this kind, Kümel involved several co-producers from five countries. These influenced the script; Their special requests complicated the project and resulted in two versions, a French over 100 minutes and an English over 87 minutes. In the first evaluation of blood on the lips , the marketing emphasized the aspects of eroticism and violence. Neither Kümel's reputation as an art filmmaker nor the fama of Delphine Seyrig, who was by far the best-known among the actors thanks to demanding works such as Last Year in Marienbad and Robbery Kisses , were brought to the fore. Kümel withdrew from the project at the premiere. The producers' strategy worked, and commercial success emerged. Later legal disputes made further performances difficult; The artistic side of the work only found attention through academic film clubs. Along with Malpertuis , Kümel's most famous film has remained blood on the lips .

Reviews

  • The film magazine Positif said in 1972 that in some scenes eroticism and humor, the fantastic and the real, combine in a successful way. "You find creative frames and interesting colors, but all too often the compulsive search for originality leads to naive solutions and cramped affectation."
  • Guide des films: "A brilliant variation on vampirism: a subtle eroticism permeates this all-too-misunderstood film."
  • A vampire film lexicon judges that among all vampire films dealing with lesbianism and the legend of Bathory, blood on the lips is the best. Another vampire film guide says, "The film combines moments of great visual poetry with entertainment and splendor, creating an almost dream-like intensity."
  • An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video: "Entertaining, fun, and erotic, this elegantly decadent adult fairy tale explores the darker side of sexuality with shocking boldness."
  • The lexicon of international films said: “Pop horror film staged with elegant images and flavourful colors, which tells an atmospheric, but extremely bloody vampire variant. The film was dismissed as meaningless and perverse when it was made, today it is one of the cult films of the genre. "

annotation

The actress Danielle Ouimet was Miss Québec in 1966.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathijs, Ernest: Les lèvres rouges / Daughters of Darkness, in: The Cinema of the Low Countries. Wallflower Press, London 2004, ISBN 1-904764-01-0 , p. 103
  2. ^ A b Marrero, Robert: Vampire movies. Fantasma Books, Key West 1994, ISBN 0-9634982-3-1 , pp. 100-101
  3. ↑ Weiss, Andrea: Vampires & Violets: Frauenliebe und Kino. German edition: Ed. Eberbach im eFeF-Verlag, Dortmund 1995, ISBN 3-905493-75-6 , pp. 98-99. Original edition: Jonathan Cape, London 1992.
  4. ↑ a b Newman, Kim (Ed.): The BFI Companion to Horror. Cassell, London 1996, ISBN 0-304-33213-5 , p. 189
  5. ^ Mathijs 2004, pp. 101-104.
  6. ↑ Positif No. 136, March 1972, pp. 73-74
  7. ↑ Tulard, Jean : Guide des films. Editions Robert Laffont, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-221-10452-8 , Volume 2 (FO), p. 1870
  8. ↑ Jones, Stephen: The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide. TitanBooks, London 1993, ISBN 1-85286-449-4 , p. 70
  9. ^ Murray, Raymond: Images in the Dark - An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video. TLA Publications, Philadelphia 1994, ISBN 1-880707-01-2 , p. 339