Veronika Franz

The Devil’s Bath

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Agnes in semi shade, suffering

Powerful to the point of punishment, The Devil’s Bath (Des Teufels Bad) is Austria’s contender for the Best International Feature Oscar in 2025. It won’t win. It probably won’t even make the shortlist. Too bleak. Too uncompromising. Seen one way, it’s a group portrait of the extremely grim existence hacked out by peasants in a remote part of 18th-century Austria. Seen another, it’s the progress of one female from fragile, dreamy single girl to married woman in psychological extremis. Anja Plaschg plays Agnes, a sweet, unworldly creature who in early scenes is married off to Wolf (David Scheid), a bear of a man who seems delighted to be married to her. Or maybe … Read more

Rimini

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Richie looks through some construction mesh

Cheers aren’t what you get in an Ulrich Seidl movie but let’s give one anyway for his return to fiction after a ten-year absence, with Rimini, a glisteningly dark, drily amusing character study of a man who’d be funny if he wasn’t so pitiful. Actually, he’s quite funny too. Looking not a million miles away from Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, and sharing a few of his character traits, Michael Thomas plays Richie Bravo, a former pop singer in Austria who now lives in Rimini, where a shadowy vestige of his old life still plays out, albeit largely in Richie’s head. As Seidl’s film opens Richie is back home in Austria and re-connecting … Read more