Austria | Germany 2024
Opening November 14, 2024

Directed by: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Writing credits: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz
Principal actors: Anja Plaschg, David Scheid, Maria Hofstätter

“As my troubles left me weary of this life, it came to me to commit a murder,” is projected on the screen at the beginning of the film.

This movie is not for the faint of heart.

Rural Austria in the 1750s was no paradise. The film begins in a lovely pastoral setting with a mother picking up her crying baby seemingly to comfort it. Reassuring at first, something unsettling envelopes the audience as the mother deliberately walks further and further into the forest and then almost casually drops the baby down the roaring waterfall to its death. Eager to confess her crime to a priest, she repents, receives absolution, and is then executed. Her corpse, seated in a chair, with its fingers, toes, and head chopped off, is put on display overlooking the valley as a warning to others. Tacked to a tree beside the body is an illustration describing her crime.

The scene suddenly switches to Agnes (Anja Plaschg), no, this is not a flashback, but a story about another young woman living at the same time nearby. Agnes, dreamy, sensitive, and deeply religious, lives a semi-squalid existence with her loving mother and brother. She is about to be married off to Wolf (David Scheid), the second son of an overbearing mother Gänglin (Maria Hofstätter). Their wedding day is engulfed by the levity of the villagers—it is enchanting, as she is carried aloft with a stunning crown of wildflowers adorning her head. All Agnes really wants is a baby. But Wolf, doting as he is, seems only to be interested in wooing his male companions; though he speaks about wanting a child, he has never quite figured out his role in the process. It’s a grueling life for all the villagers. To survive they walk miles daily to haul carp out of mud-filled lakes, and when carp season is over, they, like chain gangs, purge the fields of stones to ready it for planting. Agnes falls into a deep depression, historically named the “devil’s bath.” She escapes back to her family, but a helpless Wolf slings her over his shoulder and marches her back home. She wanders the forests as she sinks deeper and deeper into depression. One day she stumbles on the corpse of the executed woman and returns to it again and again. In her desperation Agnes comes up with an escape plan sanctioned by her dogmatic Church.

Anja Plaschg is brilliant in the role of Agnes. Remarkably, she also wrote the melancholy score under the name Soap&Skin. Cinematographer Martin Gschlacht masterfully captures both the harsh, grim life of the villagers and the enchanting beauty of the forest; he was awarded the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the 2024 Berlinale. Austrian filmmaking directors-writers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala once again portray a traumatized woman as in Good Night Mommy (2014) and The Lodge (2019). This film is steeped in folklore, superstition, religion…and history. They reveal in the closing title: there were four hundred similar cases recorded in the Austrian annals. According to eighteenth century Catholic dogma, a murderer could confess, repent, and here’s the loophole, still get into heaven. There was no absolution for those committing suicide, it was a direct pathway to hell. (Pat F.)