An edgy new voice inside the world of French style, Adrien Beau labored as a designer and scenographer for the likes of Dior, John Galliano and Agnes B earlier than making his function debut with the offbeat vampire film “Vourdalak.”
Produced by Judith-Lou Levy at Les Movies du Bal, “Vourdalak” will world premiere at Venice Critics’ Week and can possible be considered one of its boldest entries. At a time when horror has change into a mainstream style overloaded with particular results, “Vourdalak” couldn’t be extra radical. Lensed in Tremendous 16, the movie’s central character is a vampire patriarch named Gorcha, performed by a marionette that Beau operates and lends his voice to.
In an interview with Selection forward of the competition, Beau says he received the concept for the movie after he and Levy got here throughout “La Famille du Vourdalak,” an odd vampire novella penned by Alexeï Konstantinovitch Tolstoï, printed in 1884.
“‘La Famille du Vourdalak’ was written 40 years earlier than ‘Dracula,’ which manufactured this picture of an aristocratic vampire in his fortress. However as this novella exhibits it, the unique vampire was a decrease class countryman,” says Beau, who penned the movie with Hadrien Bouvier. “In literature, vampires and zombies are the identical, but it surely’s cinema that has given them a special social rank: zombies are commoners, bums, whereas vampires are aristocrats. In our movie we flip the tables, we observe an aristocrat who finds himself amongst peasants who occur to be vampires.”
He additionally infused “Vourdalak” together with his inventive expertise, on show by way of his earlier two quick movies: “La Petite Sirene,” a black-and-white fantasy movie shot in Tremendous 8, and “Les condiments irreguliers,” shot in Tremendous 16 and loosely impressed by the lifetime of the seventeenth century arisocrat Marquise de Brinvilliers.
Even when it’s impressed by a broadcast materials, “Vourdalak” is in some ways a private movie for Beau, because it brings collectively his “ardour for nineteenth century darkish romanticism and puppetry.”
“I began out in plastic arts and have all the time been all in favour of drawings, sculpture and puppetry, as a result of it’s on the crossroads between plastic arts and dwell spectacle,” says Beau, who sports activities a wealth of fascinating tattoos, together with a bit fly on his higher left cheek and skeleton fingers on his palms.
Beau stated he made “Vourdalak” with a marionette as a result of he’s a fan of horror movies like “Alien” or “The Fly” the place “creature puppets give such dramatic power to the story.” “As soon as we determined to go that route, we needed to shoot it in Tremendous 16 to create one thing distinctive, but harmonious when it comes to type and narration,” he says.
Capturing the movie this manner got here with constraints as a result of they “couldn’t have as many horror scenes as in a basic horror movie,” he says. “You possibly can’t have as many particular results as a result of they’re actual results, however this limitation forces you to be extra ingenious and create characters in a different way in order that we care about them. As my editor informed me, with particular results it appears to be like actual but it surely feels pretend, and with what we created, it appears to be like pretend however hopefully it feels actual.”
“Vourdalak” boasts dedicated performances by Kacey Mottet Klein (“Occurring”), Ariane Labed (“Attenberg”), Gregoire Colin (“Each Sides of the Blade”) and Vassili Schneider (“Les amandiers”). That includes lush cinematography, the movie was shot completely in pure settings. “We aimed to create one thing weird and totally different from all of the fantasy movies that we’re used to. It nearly appears to be like like a movie unearthed from the Soviet Union within the Sixties,” says Beau.
The unique rating contributes to giving the movie its retro vibe, which Beau stated was impressed by “Fellini’s Casanova.” “Vourdalak” is paced with instrumental themes impressed by conventional Russian or Slavic music, but modernized. The costumes are additionally extremely elaborate, courtesy of Beau. “After working in vogue for greater than 10 years, I might by no means make a movie with actors carrying denims and T-shirts,” he quips.
Les Movies du Bal, based by Levy and Eve Robin, is thought for delivering daring motion pictures mixing style and politics. The Paris-based firm has notably produced Mati Diop’s Cannes-prizewinning “Atlantics” and Nadav Lapid’s “Ahed’s Knee,” which received the Jury Prize at Cannes.
“Vourdalak” was co-produced by Lola and Marco Pacchioni at Grasp Motion pictures. The film lured high-profile companions and was pre-bought by pay TV group OCS, Amazon Prime Video and The Jokers, whereas WTFilms handles worldwide gross sales.
