Les Deux Orphelines Vampires (translated as The Two Orphan Vampires) is a 1997 French horror film written and directed by Jean Rollin, one of France’s most distinctive and poetic voices in gothic cinema. Adapted from Rollin’s own novel, the film continues his lifelong exploration of vampires as tragic, romantic figures — creatures torn between beauty and horror, innocence and damnation.

The story follows Henriette (Isabelle Teboul) and Louise (Alexandra Pic), two blind orphaned girls raised in a Catholic convent. To the nuns, they appear fragile and pure, embodiments of divine suffering. But when night falls, their blindness disappears — and their true nature is revealed. They are vampires, condemned to wander the world in eternal darkness, yet gifted with sight under the moonlight.

Each night, Henriette and Louise escape the convent to roam through cemeteries and desolate streets, feeding on blood to sustain their existence. They speak to the dead, dream of lost worlds, and search for the fragments of memory that connect them to their past lives. Their vampirism is less a curse than a form of melancholic exile — they do not kill out of cruelty but necessity, and their hunger is as emotional as it is physical.

Jean Rollin uses the vampire myth not for shock, but as a metaphor for longing, memory, and the duality of purity and corruption. The girls’ nocturnal wanderings unfold like a dark fairy tale, filled with surreal imagery — fog-draped cemeteries, marble angels, and blood that glows under moonlight. The tone is lyrical, almost dreamlike, reflecting Rollin’s fascination with the border between life and death, sleep and awakening, faith and desire.

The dialogue between Henriette and Louise often resembles poetry, filled with philosophical musings on existence and eternity. They are aware of their fate yet yearn for transcendence. Their sisterhood — intimate, tender, and eternal — forms the emotional core of the film. Though they encounter other vampires and beings from the shadows, their bond remains unbroken, representing a fragile purity within their cursed condition.

Cinematically, Les Deux Orphelines Vampires bears all the hallmarks of Rollin’s style: slow pacing, painterly compositions, minimal plot, and rich atmosphere. Rather than conventional horror, it offers a meditative experience — a hypnotic visual poem about loneliness and the eternal search for meaning in a world without salvation.