THE DEVIL’S BATH by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (GOODNIGHT MOMMY, THE LODGE) is closest to being part of the folk horror genre. But the folklore here is Austrian Catholicism and the horror isn’t a supernatural creature, but the life and death of women in a merciless world dominated by church and superstition.

A Lower Austrian valley at the end of the 18th century. The sun shines and glitters on the grass where a baby lies in a cradle, in the background a squat stone house, the chimney smokes, a boy plays. The mother sends him home, takes the baby out of the cradle, walks through the forest, puts a chain around the crying child and finally stands high up in a waterfall. She throws the child into the abyss. In the next shot, she runs across a foggy bridge towards a castle-like building. She knocks on the door, which opens: "I have something to confess." This is the prologue.

THE DEVIL’S BATH is based on the book “Suicide by Proxy – The Unintended Consequences of Public Executions in Eighteenth-Century Germany” by Kathy Stuart. Stuart documented 400 cases of suicide by proxy. Out of fear of damnation after committing suicide, women and men committed crimes that would receive the death penalty, primarily murder, blasphemy and “sodomy.“ Before execution, penance transformed the perpetrators into repentant sinners who could hope for redemption in the afterlife. The direct role model for farmer’s wife Agnes in THE DEVIL’S BATH is Eva Litzfeller, who turned herself after murdering a child in 1762.

Agnes (Anja Plaschg) weaves an autumnal crown, it’s her wedding day with Wolf, the second oldest son of a farmer’s family. He will carelessly throw the crown to the side later. Everything revolves around having a child. Symbolically, Agnes is dressed in a nurse’s costume and an old woman places a bundle in her lap. But her husband doesn’t touch her after the wedding, he just masturbates next to her. Agnes is dreamy, she collects butterflies and flowers: “look at how it glitters” she says to Wolf. “Yeah, they’re fish scales,” he responds, unimpressed.

Franz and Fiala illustrate the world as Agnes would see it – her poetic gaze captures the enchanted moss, the rustling thicket, the mist over the valley, the white and green meadow. But Agnes’ darkness is also reflected in nature: the sludge in the river where the farmers fish carp, the demon-like fish heads, the church filmed on its knees like the house of a God who condemns faster than he can redeem. She falls into a depression for which she has no vocabulary for. The priest says “she’s in the devil’s bath.“ Franz/Fiala avoid all cliches. The villagers aren’t brutes. In their way, some mean well for Agnes, but Agnes’ despair has no place in this world strictly limited to utility and piety. One person kills himself in the village, he can’t be buried. His corpse rots in a barren field, and Agnes’ soul darkens with it.

THE DEVIL’S BATH is a powerful film, with tremendous images shot with dramaturgical furor. The film has physical power, visual pathos, and an effortless sense for atmosphere.

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy