Thirst/Bakjwi

Kim Ok-vin in the Thérèse Raquin part

Directed by Park Chan-Wook. Starring Song Kang-ho, Kim Ok-vin, Kim Hae-suk , Shin Ha-gyun. 18 cert, IFI Dublin, 133 min

The provocative Thirst is Emile Zola with fangs sharpened, writes DONALD CLARKE

HAVE YOU got room for just one more vampire entertainment? With True Bloodon the telly, Twilight 2just around the corner and Daybreakersarriving early next year, even the most committed bloodhounds may find themselves tiring of the genre.

The good news is that Park Chan-wook, Korean director of the peerless Oldboy, has devised an original and fresh approach to the material. Paradoxically, he has achieved this by drawing on source material from the 19th century.

When it was announced that Thirst,co-winner of the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, was inspired by Emile Zola's Thérèse Raquin, a psychological novel from 1867, most pundits assumed that Park was playing one of his little jokes. As it happens, the film has more to do with that novel than many formal literary adaptations. The mix of Gallic melodrama and Asian extreme cinema proves agreeably intoxicating.

Song Kang-ho, star of Park's Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, appears as Sang-hyeon, a priest who spends his days ministering to patients in a local hospital. Unsure that he is doing any real good in the world, he volunteers to take part in an experiment aimed at developing a vaccine for a lethal virus. He contracts the disease, which causes unsightly boils, but mysteriously recovers and, now apparently immortal and thirsty for blood, is hailed as a saint in his local town.

The hero moves in with a simple- minded old friend and fast becomes attracted to his pal’s young wife. (Here’s where Zola comes in.) A tawdry romance leads to murder, derangement and damnation.

It can't be denied that Thirsthas its occasional longueurs. Many of Sang-hyeon's more obscure interactions with his lover's mother-in-law could have been trimmed without causing much damage. But Park's unique combination of broad humour and extreme violence enlivens even the quietest moments.

Occasionally disgusting, frequently absurd, ultimately rather moving, Thirstonce again orives that there is fertile ground between the arthouse and the grindhouse. It's just a shame that the subtitles are so dreadful.