Agnes of God: Franz & Fiala’s Bleak Portrait of Women & Madness
“A Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time,” wrote Ray Bradbury in one of his stories from Long After Midnight (1976), as succinct a phrase as any to convey the cultural facets which historically plagued troubled or troubling women, almost always to forge their doom. The Devil’s Bath, the third feature from Austrian directing duo Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala, is not a film about witches, per se. However, their first period piece, set in 1750 Upper Austria, is most assuredly a horror story, taken from historical court records.… Read the rest
