Directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala are known for creating incredibly bleak films that get to the dark heart of humanity. In both Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge, the filmmaking duo have proved their strong visual aesthetics, as well as their own flair of nihilism. And that only continues in their third feature film The Devil’s Bath, which is out now on Shudder.
In The Devil’s Bath,
In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.
We spoke with Franz and Fiala about gaining actors’ trust, capitalism, repressed sexuality, and how to craft a period piece that actually feels real.
DC: How does it feel to go from an English language film back to the German language while also going back in time and making a period film on top of that?
Severin Fiala: I think what we learned is that every place where you can make a movie has different challenges in a way. So some things are much harder in Austria and in Germany than they are in the U.S., but that’s mainly getting the budget together. So I think it takes way longer until you have the money, then you only get it in small parts. You never have the money you need to spend at the moment. So financing a movie is super difficult, but there is a lot more creative freedom. And actually we were very much looking forward to going back to a place where we could make the movie exactly how we wanted it to.
Veronika Franz: But to be honest, when it comes to such a period piece, I would’ve felt uncomfortable doing my first period film in a foreign country, on a foreign continent even because it had something to do with your roots. It also feels closer, or at least to me to do that with a German-speaking film.
SF: I think it’s very tricky because for us at least most period films, they tend to be a cliched version of the past and not be very interesting. And I think that’s even more dangerous if it’s a different country. So if we try to recreate the history that’s not our own, it’s even more difficult, we guess.
VF: And that said, it was so strange that the whole story came through an American! That was really the craziest aspect of it all because how could she know our history in Austria, in Germany so well? And we never heard about it. So that was a strange moment.
SF: We were very afraid of making a period piece for cliche reasons. So what we tried to do is to make everything as real as possible and as chaotic as possible, which makes us sound very unprofessional. But I think it’s actually what helped the most.
For example, with the wedding party, we handpicked real people. It was very absurd because in Veronika’s hotel room, we had 250 printed-out faces on the wall, and then we arranged a group of people that we wanted to have at the wedding whose faces we really liked or whom we knew, but still, we knew they wouldn’t be able to act.
VF: So we said, okay, we need to have a real party,
SF: The musicians were playing, playing throughout the whole day, just getting the party going. The sound guy was, it was the second day of shooting. He was desperate because he said, you will never be able to edit that. And we said, yeah, of course, it’s not ideal, but it’s the only way of really doing this party. And he said, I never thought I would end up in a historic documentary.
VF: Also, the crew would wear historic costumes because nobody knew where the camera was and they had to be able to cross the image.
DC: Were you in costume?
SF: No, because we knew where the camera was.
DC: Oh, that’s true. Okay, fair enough. [Laughs]
SF: But that was part of, I think, the method of achieving a period film that doesn’t feel staged in a way. Also like the actors, they lived in those places that were actual houses from that time, they lived there and they actually cooked there.
For example, it’s a very minor aspect, but there is this small piece of wood with burns inside of a can that you put in your mouth. We learned about it through research. Usually, you would tell your actors, put it in your mouth, and then do this and that, and it would feel fake. But Anya, she was actually cooking there quite a few times. If it’s dark outside, then the only light source is underneath your pot and you would never see what’s in the pot and if it’s burning or not. And if you need to hold the pot and stir it, you don’t have any free hands. So you need to put this in your mouth in order to be able to move.
She found out by herself because she was just cooking and figured it out on her own. That’s why it feels realistic and normal now because we haven’t told her. But she found out that it was necessary. And I think you need to come up with ways of having all the people involved realize that something is just the way to do it because it’s necessary.
VF: The same goes for the costumes. Maria, who played the mother-in-law, her costume was too long so she could not work. She said, “Oh no, I can’t work. I can’t move. It’s just too long.” So we shortened it and they wore the costumes months or months before the shoot so that it really felt normal to them. They even once went to the supermarket and were surprised that people would stare at them. And then they realized, “Oh, okay, I’m still in costume, I forgot.” That’s why it feels so, I think also for the audience that you feel the world and you understand because for them it feels normal.
SF: That’s what we learned in this movie. For the first dress rehearsal, they all wore the dresses and we were kind of shocked. The costumes, they were great and they were designed to have small faults. There were some holes or they were too big or too small, which we wanted because they were not tailored to the specific actors and actresses. But nevertheless, it felt like they all were artificial or in costume in a way that didn’t fit.
The only way of getting rid of that was not to change the costumes, but to have the actors wear the costumes, and sleep in the costumes. Once it was normal or once they felt normal to them, then it looked normal. It looked also in photos, it just looked normal. And I think that’s what we learned.
VF: That was the key.
DC: That’s wild. So what was the casting process like then? Because you said some of them are not actors, obviously the background, but the main players we have, what was that casting like and getting them into that headspace of going back in time like this?
VF: I mean, the main actress, Anja [Plaschg], she’s originally a musician, a singer, quite famous in Austria and Europe. Initially, we actually asked her for the music, for the score and sent her the script. Then she wrote us a letter back and told us how much she could connect to the story and to the main character. So we were surprised at how closely she understood Agnes. So we said to her, “Let’s audition.” And she said, “I’ve never done that before.” So we said, “OK, but it’s only the three of us, and let’s go to an audition room.” I mean, we knew before that she’s a very charismatic person, but we were convinced basically very, very very quickly.
DC: She carries The Devil’s Bath on her shoulders, too. That’s wild that this is her first time being in a film.
SF: We’ve worked with non-professional actors and first-time actors also on Goodnight Mommy for the twins. We knew that we needed to structure the whole film shoot a bit differently because usually, for example, you would structure a schedule so that all the scenes that take place in one location are always pulled together, even if that means shooting the last scene of the film on the second or third day.
But with The Devil’s Bath, we shot it in chronological order, even if the crew did a lot of moving back and forth between the places. It was so that all the actors could really grow into the whole story and experience it as we see it because it’s like a downward spiral also emotionally. There would’ve been no way, I think, for Anja, however amazingly talented she is, to play the confession scene on the first day. So it was basically the second to last day of shooting and she had a whole movie to grow into that scene.
In general, I think we don’t rehearse in traditional ways. There are no table reads and learning the lines and there are no stage rehearsals. It’s more or less spending time together, making them trust us, and learning to trust them. And then as we said, understanding this world by trying. Anja is amazing. She wants to experience everything mostly for real. So she wanted to experience the cold, she wanted to experience running through thorns. She really wanted to do all of that. And I think enabling those experiences to happen in a safe space is what we’re aiming to do.
VF: You only can do that if you trust your actors and your actors trust you. So that’s very important before the shoot that you get to know each other as much as possible. What are our limitations, what’s hers and how can we work together? So I think this is maybe what’s very important to us with all our actors.
SF: For example, we pushed The Devil’s Bath for a year. We could have shot nearly a year earlier, but we wanted to really get to know each other beforehand. And I think that’s something, because you asked earlier, you could never do that in the US once the film is green-lit and financed. You just need to go. Here, we had the freedom to say, “No, it’s not right yet.”
DC: I know The Devil’s Bath is primarily about women with depression, but I also really love how you incorporate masculinity and repressed sexuality from men, as well. Why did you want to incorporate that into this story? It’s not a huge plot point, but it’s such an important one for his character to have emotional depth. So I wanted to hear about why include this and discussions of oppressed homosexuality in this film.?
VF: I think the whole phenomenon of suicide by proxy and the case we’re talking about specifically, they’re very complex. The danger that lies in telling that story is that there is one easy explanation for why it happened. And the easiest or the quickest you could think of is she had a very evil, abusive husband. So we really wanted to work against that because, in the original trial protocol, she says that her husband wasn’t a problem and he was actually very nice to her.
So we were trying to also make him and all the other characters, real characters who also have their own secrets and their own fears which they’re not able to discuss. For us, it makes the whole story even more tragic. She will never have a child, but she cannot even, or they cannot even discuss the underlying problem in those times. This makes Wolf a very sad figure as well.
VF: He’s also a victim of society, like Anja.
SF: When we’re asked who is guilty or what caused the depression, then it’s not one of those characters, but it’s society and the world that we all created. That’s what makes The Devil’s Bath and this topic still relevant today. It’s not church and church dogmas dictating or inflicting this pressure or dictating the rules anymore, but it’s, say, capitalist society maybe. But it’s still very much the same.
DC: People still live lives like this without ever coming out, forced to participate in compulsive heterosexuality. That is still a thing today. Unfortunately, 1750 Austria now might not be as different as people want to think it is. And I think that’s what I love so much about this movie. It feels very universal.
VF: Also when it comes to depression, that’s also a taboo in many areas of the world. You would not talk about it. There’s especially a stigma around being depressed, especially for men.
The Devil’s Bath talks about when becoming depressed, but generally, we feel that in many cases, men and women have wildly different symptoms when it comes to physical or mental illness. Heart attacks are not recognized when women have them because they experience different symptoms in a way. The cliche symptoms of heart attack are how men have a heart attack. That’s why it goes unnoticed for many women.
The same is true for depression, where all the cliche symptoms are how women mainly experience depression. It’s totally different for men. So they wouldn’t even know that they’re suffering from depression. It mostly goes unnoticed because it’s sometimes aggressive behavior towards others and themselves. The problem is not that people don’t talk about it. It’s that people simply don’t know about themselves that they’re suffering from depression.
VF: Some months ago, new statistics came out about how widespread depression is in Germany and how it’s not often detected. So most of the people don’t know and just withdraw from their families or throw themselves into work, which distances them even more from the world. So it has different symptoms.
SF: Society cannot deal with it. I mean we talk more about it, but the effects depression has are even worse, I think because work, which was a huge value in the time our film takes place, but work nowadays is how many people either define their lives or it’s necessary for them to have two jobs to be able to sustain their life and to support their families
The Devil’s Bath is out now on Shudder.
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