Love and war

The Countess

(2009)

Look, I love Julie Delpy (who wrote, directed, and starred in this oddity), but what the what? First thing I want to know is: was the screenplay really in English, and if so, was it intentionally written to sound like a stilted translation, and if not, was it translated intentionally to sound like a stilted translation, and was the dubbing sometimes off, or was that just the Netflix stream? OK, that's more than one thing.

Oddly, the usual sources--the New York Times, RottenTomatoes.com--reveal little, except that the picture seems to have gone straight to video (no NYT review, only 2 on RT). How about Wikipedia? Well, there we find that it showed at Berlin and Cannes. And there's a link to an interview before she made the film, where she talks about the theme of female power in the 17th-century setting, and yes, that could have been a strong element, as might have been the narrative ambiguity (did she or did she not kill 400 virgins in order to keep herself young with their blood?--a potentially intriguing question, I think you'll agree), if only I hadn't been so distracted by everyone talking as I imagine characters in Harlequin Romances talk.