The Devil’s Bath movie storyline. Upper Austria in 1750. A fish pond reflects the overcast sky. A deep, dark forest swallows the sunlight. On a hilltop, the corpse of a hanged woman is displayed. As an example. A warning. An omen? The deeply religious and highly sensitive Agnes regards the dead woman with pity.
But also with longing: she feels like a stranger in the world of her husband Wolf, whom she has just married. It is an emotionally cold world consisting of work, chores and expectations. Agnes increasingly withdraws into herself. Her internal prison becomes ever more oppressive, her melancholy more overwhelming. Soon, her only way out seems to be a shocking act of violence.
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala create a profound and disturbing psychological portrait of a woman made of flesh and bone, sinew and soul, played by Anja Plaschg who, as Soap & Skin, also composed the score. Des Teufels Bad gives a voice to the peasant women who were invisible and unheard at that time and depicts their harsh daily lives defined by religious dogma and taboos whose impact resonates to this day. The film is based on historical court records about a shocking, previously unexplored chapter of European history.
The Devil’s Bath (German: Des Teufels Bad) is a 2024 historical horror drama film written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, and starring Anja Plaschg. The film is based on the book ”Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation by Kathy Stuart as well as criminal trial records for Agnes Catherina Schickin (Württemberg, Germany, 1704) as well as Eva Lizlfellnerin (Puchheim, Austria, 1761-62). 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 film had its world premiere at the Main Competition of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, on February 20, 2024, where it competed for the Golden Bear. It was released in Austria on March 8, 2024, and received positive reviews from critics. The film was selected as the Austrian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.
About the Story
A woman drops a baby off a waterfall before walking to a church to confess her 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 and Wolf are wed and they move into a house Wolf has purchased for them. That night, Agnes sees a drunk Wolf tell his best friend Lenz that he is handsome, with Lenz replying that he likes him, too. Agnes 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 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.
The next night Agnes once again tries to initiate sex with a now sober Wolf, she is rebuffed again and Wolf goes to sleep. The next day at church, a somewhat despondent Agnes prays to a wax dolls of baby Jesus for a child. Agnes wakes early and makes it to a pond where Wolf works as a fisherman before everyone else in hopes of catching some fish, 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 Lenz has hanged himself. After rushing to the scene he and his friends take Lenz’s body away while his mother begs them to let her bury him.
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. 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. 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, 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. She then goes to the church and tells them she’s committed a crime.
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The Devil’s Bath (2024)
strong>Des Teufels Bad
Directed by: Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
Starring: Anja Plaschg, David Scheid, Maria Hofstätter, Tim Valerian Alberti, Natalija Baranova, Franziska Holzer, Elmar Kurz, Claudia Martini, Camilla Schilia, Elias Schützenhofer
Screenplay by: Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
Production Design by: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Cinematography by: Martin Gschlacht
Film Editing by: Michael Palm
Costume Design by: Tanja Hausner
Music by: Soap & Skin
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: IFC Films (United States)
Release Date: February 20, 2024 (Berlinale), March 8, 2024 (Austria), June 21, 2024 (Uniteed States)
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