‘The Devil’s Bath’ Review: Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s Beautiful but Staggeringly Bleak Vision of Female Depression in 18th Century Austria
variety.comJessica Kiang Although it comes from the filmmaking duo behind “Goodnight Mommy” and “The Lodge,” Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala‘s “The Devil’s Bath” is not a horror movie.
Its sinister, woodsy atmospherics, where wet leaves mingle with mud and fishscales and menstrual blood, may suggest witchcraft or devil worship.
But it is actually something far more frightening — an exploration, based on real records, of a chapter of Austrian history so dark it could be a black hole, which might account for its invisibility to posterity.
But if the story is so pitilessly bleak you may want to look away, the filmmaking craft is so compelling that you can’t. The world of “The Devil’s Bath” is one that cannot be easily escaped, however much one might want, in the words of one of the women it emblematizes, “to be gone from it.” With only a couple of feature acting credits to her name, Anja Plaschg (who as Soap&Skin also provides the soulful scraping strings and broken, breathy folk hymns on the soundtrack) is astonishingly convincing as Agnes, the young woman first seen happily weaving berries and twigs into her bridal headdress.
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