‘The Devil’s Bath’ Review – For Women Who Are Not Meant For Small Lives

For people familiar with Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s films, The Devil’s Bath is any given Sunday for the Austrian filmmaking duo.

Cinema of brutality, the occult, and the bizarre are their specialties. We’ve seen it before with two brilliant ‘cruel’ films, Goodnight Mommy – the German, 2014-version – and The Lodge where themes of motherhood, femininity, the occult, claustrophobia, and mental illness intersect with loneliness, period-specific storytelling, and minimal dialogue.

This feature is their most mature project but also the most abstract. It’s strange because one would expect the artists to grow into commercialization and mainstream filmmaking, not owing more and giving more to the expressionist, abstract form of storytelling. This makes the film inviting and alienating in the sense of making sense of the unfolding story. 

Franz and Fiala excel in putting a spotlight on female insanity. In Goodnight Mommy, the mother is questionable and conflicting with a dissociated identity presumably because she is a mother. In The Lodge, the woman who survives the cult is still haunted by their rituals and their mass manipulation methods. In The Devil’s Bath, Agnes is a girl coming to terms with the disappointment of marriage.

The film revolves around Agnes, a young woman who has just married the love of her life, only to wake up to the grim reality of marriage and womanhood in rural Europe in the 1700s. Her sanity and mental health start to deteriorate and she finds no choice but to give in to the darkness with full arms.

It’s the curse of the women greater than the only life they are handed. There’s nothing in their hands to do about it and they stand there watching as the walls fall on their heads. Agnes cracks under the pressures of marriage and oppressed femininity. Her life becomes a series of chores and repetitive actions. Everyone around her seems to dismiss her, depriving her of agency and free will. The only times she seems to have fun are when she connects with women her age, who are sadly burdened by infinite duties and responsibilities. The filmmaking duo highlights how aging plays a huge role in the hierarchy of the women of that isolated community, and how it plays a role in their interactions and shared sympathy. Agnes and women her age are always scolded by the older women in the community, closely watched lest they corrupt each other or give advice that goes against the strict patriarchal system in this rural community.

Religion is also one of the directors’ most common themes. It is a tool for exploiting women and succumbing them to submission. The film creates an oppressive shameful culture for women who fail to meet the expectations their community builds for them, this is shown through a religious and misogynist lens.

The Devil’s Bath is a journey of a woman spiraling into madness, but is it delirium or the unraveling of a burdened mind, ravaged by the monotony of married life in 1750 Austria and the never-ending chores? This is Jeanne Dielman of the occult, all thanks to Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala for creating this domestic loop of Hell, replacing potatoes with fish heads.

The Devil’s Bath is currently playing in select theaters and is available to stream on Shudder.