The Devil's Bath

The Devil's Bath (Des Teufels Bad) is a 2024 historical period drama written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, and starring Anja Plaschg. An international co-production between Austria and Germany, the film tells the story of Agnes, a young married woman, who does not feel at home in her husband's world.

The Devil's Bath premiered on 20 February 2024 at Berlinale Palast and was selected in the Competition section at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival where it competed for the Golden Bear. The film was released in Austria on 8 March 2024 and received positive reviews from critics.

Plot
A young boy is seen playing with a crying child before he is called back to his house, leaving it in its basket. An unnamed woman picks up the crying infant and begins a long walk up a mountain. As she walks, the baby stops crying and she takes off her rosary and places it around the baby's neck. Stopping atop a waterfall, she stands silently, the baby once again wailing, then throws it down the falls, killing it. The woman crosses herself, then walks to a church/prison tower, knocks on the door, and tells the person who opens it that she has committed a crime. The film cuts to night, slowly panning up the body of the now decapitated woman sitting in a chair, her head in a cage behind her. The body is missing some toes and fingers and, as we watch, an unseen person takes a knife and cuts off one of the dead woman's remaining fingers, wrapping it in a cloth.

The next day, Agnes (Anja Plaschg) is seen in the forest, singing, playing with insects, and collecting flowers and berries which she is weaving into a crown. Her mother and brother call to her, telling her she will be late to her wedding. She returns home where her mother and brother are stacking a cart with her wedding dowry. The three push the cart a long way through the woods to a town where Agnes and Wolf (David Scheid) are wed. The celebration is joyous, with the townspeople lifting Agnes above their heads as she laughs. Shortly after, the men of a village play a game in which they blindfold a man, spin him around, then give him a large staff which he slams into the ground, trying to kill a live rooster. While the villagers dance and celebrate, Wolf tells Agnes he has something to show her. He leads her away from the village, then blindfolds her and leads her to a house, which he reveals he's bought for them as a wedding present. Agnes is less than pleased, being both far from her family and just down the hill from Wolf's mother, and wonders how they will pay back the loan Wolf took out to purchase the house, but he tells her he will pay it back with lumber.

That night, wandering through the drunk partygoers back in town, Agnes sees a drunk Wolf tell his best friend Lenz that he is handsome, with Lenz replying that he likes him, too. She asks Wolf's mother if she can help clean, but is told not on her wedding night. Her mother and brother tell her they are leaving, but her brother gives her a gift: the severed finger of the dead woman from the beginning of the film. Back at her house, Agnes kisses the finger and places it under her mattress hoping it will help her conceive a child. However, when a drunk Wolf returns later, he climbs into bed, makes her turn away, fails to get an erection, and goes to sleep.

Agnes wakes alone in bed. After searching the house and stables, she quickly dresses and sets off to find Wolf. She meets a woman and two children and asks them to lead her to the pond where Wolf works as a fisherman. They agree, and start leading her through the woods, but run off and hide, leaving her lost. She stumbles across a drawing posted on a tree, detailing the woman throwing her child down the waterfall and her subsequent execution. A few feet away, she discovers the corpse of the woman, sitting upright in a chair on a small altar.

A little while later, Agnes finds Wolf, his mother, and a group of townsfolk dredging a pond for fish. Wolf's mother directs her to help and is critical when Agnes, unused to such labor, has trouble keeping up, as well as when Agnes falls to her knees in prayer when the church bells toll. At lunch, Agnes is tasked with handing out bread to the workers and is reprimanded by Wolf's mother for giving two loaves to a worker who requested more than one. Wolf shows Agnes the way home and along the way she collects shiny fish scales and comments that the forest is singing. As Agnes is making dinner that night, Wolf's mother critiques her cooking and shows her how to put away her cookware and food stores, despite Agnes protesting. After Wolf's mother leaves, Agnes puts things back where she prefers them, then once again kisses the finger and places it under the mattress. Trying to initiate sex with a now sober Wolf, she is rebuffed again and Wolf goes to sleep.

The next day at church, and somewhat despondent Agnes prays to a wax dolls of baby Jesus for a child. On her way out, she discovers a trap door in the floor which looks down into a dark cell. The women of the village gather at the nearby stream, washing laundry. Again, Wolf's mother is critical, particularly of a young pregnant woman who does her laundry with Agnes. Agnes comments on the young woman's hair comb and the young woman gifts it to her. Agnes falls asleep in the woods and returns home to find Wolf and his mother eating dinner. When Agnes tries to help, Mother Gänglin, clearly annoyed, tells her not to bother and asks where she's been. Agnes lies and says she was at church. After his mother leaves, Agnes asks Wolf if his mother will be there every day and whether Mother Gänglin likes her. He tells Agnes that she does, and points out that his mother gifted them fish heads. For the third night in a row, Wolf refuses to have sex with Agnes.

Agnes wakes early and makes it to the pond before everyone else in hopes of catching some fish to make up for the day before, but gets stuck in the mud. When Wolf and the other workers arrive, he admonishes her for being so reckless and tells her she could have drowned. That night, someone pounds on their door and tells Wolf that he needs to hurry, something has happened to Lenz. Wolf bolts out the door and Agnes follows, unseen. Agnes arrives just as the group of men force the barn doors open to reveal Lenz has hanged himself and his mother begging them to let her bury him. A stunned Wolf grabs the cart and the other men load the body onto it, carting it away.

The next day, the priest gives a sermon to the town and explains that Lenz cannot be buried because suicide is a sin and what he did is worse than murder. He goes on to say that the woman who threw her baby down the waterfall was at least saved because she received confession before her execution, so she was forgiven. As she leaves church, Agnes sees Lenz's corpse left to rot in a refuse heap. While working in a field, Agnes has her period, which leaves her despondent. When giving out bread at lunch again, the pregnant washer woman asks for a second loaf, since she's eating for two, but Agnes refuses. While walking home, Agnes harms herself by cutting her tongue, then lies down near the headless corpse of the waterfall woman. She returns home late again and overhears Wolf's mother complaining about her to him, calling Agnes a burden for not getting pregnant. Agnes grows more depressed and instead of going inside, she returns to the altar and sings to the head of the dead woman all night.

The next morning, Agnes's brother finds her asleep in his barn. Apathetically, she tells her mother and brother that she's scared to go back, but they tell her she must and that they'll visit her soon. Wolf tries to get her to come home, but she refuses, so he carries her back. A despondent Agnes refuses to get up or do her chores. Food rots and the goats become sick and infected, having to be put down. Agnes is sent to a barber (the closest thing the town has to a doctor), where he sews a piece of horse hair through the back of her neck and tells her she needs to repeatedly shift it from side to side so that the wound festers and the "poison" in her head leeches out. On her way home, she finds an unattended baby in the woods and brings it home with her. She tells Wolf and his mother that it's a miracle, but they are horrified and tell her to return it.

As her depression worsens, Agnes decides to kill herself by eating rat poison. Wracked with pain and vomiting, she begs Wolf to get her a priest. He leaves, but returns alone, telling her the priest was not home, but that they can go together and see him the next day. Distraught that she might die without confessing, she admits that she's eaten rat poison and he forces her to vomit it up. The next morning, he and his mother dress Agnes and Wolf carries her back to her mother and brother's farm, telling them that she's in the Devil's bath and tried to kill herself.

The next morning, Agnes awakens early, dresses, and walks back toward the town. Along the way, she finds a group of children collecting wood by a pond and asks a young boy to lead her to a small shrine in the woods. She promises him payment if he'll say a small prayer with her, but when he finishes, she stabs him in the neck. He survives the initial cut and begins screaming for help. She tells him that now he'll never sin and will be an angel before god as she slits his throat and he dies in her arms. Like the woman at the start of the film, Agnes knocks on the door of the church/prison tower and tells them she's committed a crime.

Agnes is locked in a cell and gives confession to the priest, admitting that she no longer wishes to live in this world, but wanted absolution before she died. She murdered the boy knowing she'd be able to give her final confession before being executed because she couldn't see another way out. The priest absolves her of her sins and she begins to laugh and weep uncontrollably.

A now catatonic Agnes is wrapped sewn into animal skin and dragged through town to the altar where she will be executed. A hood is placed over her head by the executioner and she begins to sing quietly. A young girl in the crowd recognizes the song and sings along with her until it ends abruptly as the executioner beheads Agnes with a sword. While her husband weeps, the crowd surges forward and musicians begin playing a jaunty tune. The blood spurting from Agnes's neck is collected in a buckets and the townspeople pay to dip their cups and bowls in so they can drink her blood (it was believed that drinking the blood of executed prisoners would ward against melancholy). The townsfolk continue to dance and celebrate as Agnes's head is placed on a pike next to her corpse.

Cast



 * Anja Plaschg as Agnes
 * Maria Hofstätter as Mother Gänglin
 * David Scheid as Wolf
 * Natalija Baranova as Ewa Schikin
 * Lukas Walcher as Luke
 * Claudia Martini
 * Agnes Lampl
 * Camilla Schilia

Background
The film is based on the historical research of Kathy Stuart who reconstructed the practice of "suicide by proxy," a novel crime that was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in German-speaking Central Europe and Scandinavia. Suicidal people feared eternal damnation that direct suicide entailed, so they found a detour. They committed a capital crime and then immediately turned themselves in to authorities and demanded their execution. The perpetrators hoped that after repentance, confession, eucharist, and religiously framed public execution, they would achieve salvation. This crime was committed predominantly by women. The character of Agnes is based largely on the historical perpetrator Eva Lizlfellnerin (c. 1736–1762), an Upper Austrian peasant.

The film was produced by Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion GmbH (Austria) in co-production with Heimatfilm (Germany). The production was funded by the Austrian Film Institute, Vienna Film Fund, Film Location Austria (FISA) and the state of Lower Austria, German Film Fund, Film and Media Foundation NRW and Eurimages; with additional support from Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Arte.

The psychogram created by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala has Anja Plaschg as the lead actress, who also composed the music. Martin Gschlacht acted as the director of photography and Michael Palm edited the film.

Filming
The film was shot for over 40 days from 1 November 2020 to 29 January 2022 in Litschau, Lower Austria and North Rhine-Westphalia. In January 2022 last schedule of filming was done among other places, at the Neuenberg castle ruins near the town of Scheel in the municipality of Lindlar in the Oberbergisches Land. Over 400 extras and small actors were employed for an execution scene in December 2021 to suit the historical setting of the period.

Release
The Devil's Bath had its world premiere on 20 February 2024, as part of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, in Competition.

Filmladen is the film's distributor in Austria. The film was released theatrically on 8 March 2024 in Austria.

It was screened at the Festival of Austrian Films on 6 April 2024.

Reception
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes website, the film has an approval rating of 90% based on 58 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The critic consensus reads "A squirm-inducing period piece that locates true horror in both mind and spirit, The Devil's Bath might be Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's most chilling directorial effort yet".

Jessica Kiang reviewing in Variety said, "If the story is so pitilessly bleak you may want to look away, the filmmaking craft is so compelling that you can’t."

Susanne Gottlieb reviewing the film at Berlinale for Cineuropa wrote, "The Devil’s Bath is a movie that will stick with the viewer for a while, as it’s a drama drawing on the rich horror background of Franz and Fiala, while also emancipating itself from the genre they became famous for."

David Rooney reviewing the film for The Hollywood Reporter dubbed it as "Not horror but still plenty horrific," and opined, "While it’s punishingly grim and has some pacing issues, this is a gripping psychological study by directors operating with formidable command."

Wendy Ide wrote in ScreenDaily while reviewing the film at Berlinale, "While the story is drawn from historical facts and is specific to its period, there are few films, contemporary or otherwise, that capture so unflinchingly the distorting, debilitating symptoms of depression as a disease."

Nicholas Bell in Ion Cinema rated the film with four stars and said, "Franz and Fiala have mounted a tragic condemnation, a film where the horrors are humans and their pernicious systems of control."

Jarod Neece, having viewed the film at the Tribeca Film Festival, stated, "The Devil’s Bath is a haunting and visually stunning exploration of the human psyche." He also had praise for Anja Plaschg's performance, calling it "powerful and nuanced."

Accolades
The film was selected in Competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, thus it was nominated to compete for Golden Bear award.