The Devil’s Bath (2024)
Directed & Written by Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz
Starring Anja Plaschg, Maria Hofstätter, & David Scheid.

Drama / History / Horror / Thriller

★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

DISCLAIMER:
The following essay contains
BIG SPOILERS!
Avert thine eyes lest ye be spoiled.

Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz’s latest film The Devil’s Bath is a bleak period piece based on historical records and the work of scholar Kathy Stuart, specifically concerning a woman called Ewa Lizlfellner (and others like her), a 26-year-old Upper Austrian peasant woman who was eventually beheaded in 1762 for the crime of killing a child; in reality, Ewa was committing what’s known as “suicide by proxy,” which was a moral loophole for (mostly) women who wanted to die but did not want to face supposed eternal damnation. Fiala & Franz’s film centres on Agnes (Anja Plaschg), a devout Christian, after she marries Wolf (David Scheid) and they start their new life together. Agnes quickly finds that she’s unhappy with her life, from Wolf’s refusal to be physical with her, to her brutal mother-in-law, to the general repression of women in 18th-century Austria. After a while, she’s desperate to escape, but realises running away won’t fix anything. She wants to die. She also doesn’t want to go to Hell. So, she thinks of a new, albeit terrifying plan.

The Devil’s Bath is a painstaking and painful look into the reality of women like Agnes, particularly in rural areas during the 1700s when patriarchal values and strict heteronormativity ruled from upon the back of religion with a vicious iron fist. The focus is near entirely on Agnes’s tribulations as an 18th-century woman throughout the film, yet Fiala & Franz are sure to occasionally shift focus to Wolf, whose 18th-century existence is likewise in peril due to his inability to fit into the rigid structures of what a man was supposed to be back then; all this is intertwined, as Wolf’s problems play their own part in Agnes’s desperate depression. Altogether, The Devil’s Bath is a story about the ways people in 1700s Upper Austria tried to survive a world that didn’t accept them, and what often happened to those who simply couldn’t survive such a cruel existence.
Right from the marriage ceremony near the start of the film, Agnes’s whole existence as a married woman is a wife and a mother-to-be, meant to serve her husband and bear his children, not much else. She’s given a baby-like doll during the ceremony, partly chilling since the opening scene moments prior depicted a different woman (also based on historical records) tossing a baby over a waterfall. The baby doll is eventually paralleled with what can only be assumed to be a Christ child doll kept in a glass case within the church; here, heteronormativity, specifically the act of conceiving a child, is linked directly to religion. There’s also a short-lived subplot in the film featuring Agnes meeting a young pregnant woman in the village which hints at Agnes’s possible queerness, or at least a willingness to explore queerness. Agnes and the woman go to a spot in the forest where they lay down together, hidden from view. In a later scene when Agnes is having a mini breakdown—she screams into the forest while slicing up her own tongue using a bristly piece of foliage—she returns to that private place to lie by herself and long for a different life. A great symbol of freedom in The Devil’s Bath is the butterfly. We see Agnes admiring a butterfly, and also with one on her face. When things get worse, Agnes actually puts a butterfly in her mouth, as if she might be able to consume and become it, a reverse cocoon, in hopes she can one day fly out of that terrible place and leave her depressing existence behind.

Heteronormativity is constantly in focus throughout The Devil’s Bath, even when the plot shifts slightly now and then to look at Wolf, as it’s clearly suggested that he’s actually homosexual. Wolf has a fondness for a man called Lenz; they’re pretty close and go to the pub together frequently. When Lenz hangs himself in a barn, his suicide devastates Wolf. Plus, we see several times throughout the film that Wolf won’t, and seemingly can’t, be sexual with Agnes. The most telling scene is when Agnes tries to seduce her new husband, but Wolf turns her face away while he attempts to achieve an erection. He pushes Agnes’s face away from him repeatedly when she tries turning to make eye contact, eventually silently admitting to himself and his wife he can’t do it.
Because Upper Austria in the 1700s was, like many places, ruled over by Christianity, a man such as Wolf had no choice but to get married and pretend this was the life he wanted, even if it meant his unhappiness, along with the unhappiness of his wife. On top of everything, Lenz probably killed himself because he knew he and Wolf could never be together, then everyone in the village treated Lenz like a criminal; his body is tossed in a desolate field amongst other old, rotting bones that suggest previous suicides treated the same way. After Lenz is dead, the priest at church gives an ominous sermon. The priest says that what Lenz did “is worse than murder” which no doubt further compounded the hurt within people like Agnes who wanted to die but were afraid for their mortal souls. Perhaps worse, the priest also says “We are given life to say yes,” which is horrifying most of all when it comes to the life of women for obvious reasons; again, it left someone like Agnes feeling there was nowhere to go. Heteronormativity and Christianity combined are the villains here, even in a film that features two separate child murders.
Not too many films directly tackle depression prior to the 20th century, whereas The Devil’s Bath goes head-on at something greatly misunderstood in the time its story is set. Back in the 1700s, depression was referred to as melancholy, and there were many religious ideas about how to deal with it, none of them helpful. In the film, Agnes is taken to a village man who sticks leeches all over her, then threads what looks like horse hair (or something equally uncomfortable) through the skin at the back of her neck: “This will let the melancholy seep out.” He advises Agnes to pull the hair back and forth, which doesn’t do anything except transfer mental anguish to the body and never actually fixes the ‘melancholy.’ In Agnes’s desperate bid to die, she actually eats rat poison, but Wolf manages to make her throw most of it up. Fiala & Franz do a great, agonising job of showing Agnes go through the familiar throes of depression that people still deal with now in the 21st century: a lack of energy, not getting dressed or getting out of bed, not brushing your hair. These examples of depression, in the 18th century, were viewed as laziness, or, in Agnes’s case, as indications of not being a proper woman. Sadly, no matter how many times Agnes repeated “I wanted to be gone from the world,” with her words and with her actions, nobody listened. Instead they all let Agnes spiral into darkness, then later watched Agnes be decapitated before dancing and revelling in spurts of her blood.

The Devil’s Bath feels very similar to the recent film Hagazussa, just without the witchcraft. Both films dig deep into the patriarchy and misogyny of 18th-century Austria from different angles, even if the results aren’t all that different. While Fiala & Franz do look at issues concerning motherhood, like Agnes’s worries about not yet being a mother, they heavily concentrate on depicting a woman going through severe depression and suicidal ideation in a time when religious folks believed it could be released through the skin. The Devil’s Bath depicts how suicide-by-proxy reveals the limits and constraints shackled upon those who devote themselves blindly to religion and tradition, as well as how, in the case of so many women several hundred years ago, religion failed them, not to mention the children who were murdered. A bleak story, though bleak with a purpose, still relevant in contemporary life when women’s lives, and the lives of those who don’t fit into heteronormative societies, are still being constrained in so many ways.