Such a frustrating disappointment

best movie i've ever seen.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Not every filmmaker can work from emptiness, it's one of the toughest lines to toe the thread between sleep and lucid dreaming. It's all the difference in the world.Tarkovsky accomplished several times, Resnais in Marienbad, Herzog in Heart of Glass. Lately Lynch and perhaps Weeresethakul. Not to set the bar of comparisons inordinately high of course, but precisely because Rollin does not at all compare, say, with Hammer, even though they've worked from similarly disreputable material, or Bava who looked to simply paint with light, whereas Rollin aims to dream; so exactly because he's a little farther out from what he's often grouped together with, I feel that even when he fails he fails where most horror filmmakers haven't dared to.Rollin has repeatedly tried and been only moderately successful, when he structures with a single-pointed concentration around a sense of place, but the effort alone places him higher than most horror filmmakers in my estimation. He dares to play dumb enough so that we can perhaps dream for a while; so his plots fail to make sense when we'd like them to, where the storytelling coherence we have devised to chronicle our world would demand it, but it's a strategy of deliberate abstraction. He breaks logic so that we may flow on subconscious winds. From our end as viewers, we need to stay lucid enough to make it work.The story here is about the quest for a subconscious image from childhood; it involves a seaside castle and a young woman, a repressed memory about these. For most of the film we wander towards it, starting with a scene inside a movie theater where our protagonist gets up and follows the woman through a door. The door is by the stage, giving the impression that he disappears inside the screen. But that is the thing about emptiness, why Rollin cannot seem to sustain what he sets out to do. It is not a matter of stillness or immobility, but concentrated mind. It is a vital process. It needs to flow from a center.So far only Fascination has really worked for me, where he weaved a story about nonsense that we could safely discard around a sense of place we couldn't. The result was a captivating aura, itself a simple thing but hard to accomplish. This is equally dreamy but scattershot. Just the same, Rollin means what he does. Look at the ending here and tell me the man is just not truly, hopelessly romantic in his morbid way. He means well, you should watch him in spite of everything that works against him.

There's no question that Jean Rollin films are something of an acquired taste. His style is certainly off-putting to many. Even from someone who is fond of most of his output, I can easily understand why someone would not like Rollin's movies at all. Lips of Blood is another textbook example of the man's work with all the usual eccentric and idiosyncratic details you could reasonably expect. Its story involving female vampires is typical of the sort of thing he is most well known for. Except I have to say that I think that this film may very well be the most complete expression that Rollin ever made. I get the feeling that this movie is possibly the closest of all his pictures to the original idea he envisioned.Quite unusually much of the action takes place in the middle of the city. But as is typical for Rollin, this also incorporates scenes in a Gothic cemetery as well as the expected crumbling castle and beach sequence. However, the night time city scenes are very probably the best parts of the entire movie. They include some strange and surreal locations such as the aquarium, the night fountains and the late night cinema (showing Le Frissons des Vampires no less). The extended scene where our hero navigates all these locations is some of the most fully-realized and effective stuff Rollin ever filmed. He photographs and lights things very well too and Lips of Blood doesn't betray its ultra low-budget origins as much as most of his other films.The storyline, however, is as basic as usual. The characterizations are as paper-thin as always. But these considerations are just not what you would watch his films for, and if these things do bother you then his films are most probably not for you. But if you appreciate more dream-like fare or melancholic horror films, then this could well be worth your time. Lips of Blood is arguably Rollin's best film, it's certainly one of his most well made. Recommended to those who like Euro horror from the more surreal end of the spectrum.

The films of Jean Rollin will be an enigma to many who have not experiencing his work, yet for those who allow themselves to be taken elsewhere by his cinema it can prove a highly rewarding experience. The viewer is often taken to places that invoke bewilderment, unease, and sexual desire. By no means Rollin's best film, Levres De Sang (aka. Lips of Blood) is a beautifully lyrical, slow burner that has the uncanny ability to take the viewer into an ethereal, dream like world, where the erotic and the neurotic are intertwined.The story of a photographer, upon seeing a poster, is reminded of his childhood where a mysterious female vampire. However, this being Rollin, do not expect a traditional vampire movie (although his vampire films are arguably the most faithful to the Gothic aura and mythology of the vampire). Mostly dialogue free, with the acting catatonic, this only adds a surreal edge to the proceedings. And no vampire films have a greater sense of eroticism; it is easily to succumb to female vampires whenever they are on screen. For the uninitiated, approach with caution. But this is a fine example of the originality and unique approach which is to be found in 1970s European sex and horror cinema. Of which, Jean Rollin was undoubtedly the master.

Frederick, a man with no memory of his childhood, attends a party at which he sees a poster of some ruins which stirs, what he believes to be, memories his youth. He seems to recall meeting, and falling in love with, a young girl at the ruins 20 years previously. His mother dismisses the idea, angering Frederick who sets off to see if he can track down the ruins in the poster. His searching takes him through the dark, desolate streets of Paris where he accidentally sets free 4 vampire women who seem to protect him on his quest. All the while he is seeing or having visions of the young girl from years ago……. This being a Jean Rollin film, the expected dodgy acting and plethora of gratuitous nudity is firmly in place but does not distract from the weird and wonderful goings-on. The themes of lost childhood, memories and dreams are fused together creating what comes across as a filmed nightmare as Frederick roams the Parisian streets, searching for something he doesn't know how to find. The ending of the film is bizarre, beautiful and touching all at once. I loved it.