From an '70's flick involving female characters you would of course expect an exploitation flick, with cheap scares and gore and a bunch of lesbian vampires in some tame sex sequences. "Les lèvres rouges" is being way more classy than that. It's an almost artistically told movie, with a slow pace and not so much horror or gore as you would expect from a genre movie.
It's a movie that creates a good mood and atmosphere. It's being mysterious with its story and characters, which turns the movie also often in a more sensual one. Yes it's a real vampire movie but the movie manages to be one without featuring all of the usual clichés. It's an original movie, made in European movie style.
The style of the movie overall reminds of a French movie, though the director was Belgian. The movie was still a French, Belgian and German co-production and also features cast and crew members as well, originating from those countries. The movie itself is being set mostly in Belgium. Not really that movies around that are set in Belgium, even though it has some of the same qualities as France in it.
The pace of the movie is not always being pleasant though. Sometimes the movie just feels a bit overlong with some of its sequences but there also is a shorter version of the movie around that has cut some of its sequences down in running time. Perhaps that version of the movie works out better but I haven't seen that one.
Even though it has an international cast, the language that gets spoken in this movie is still English. It means that the movie has some obvious accents in it but nevertheless this does not go at the expenses of the actors their performances really. Especially Delphine Seyrig was really great in her role.
A great, different, more European take on the vampire genre.
7/10
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