Mother Superior (Glasgow Frightfest 2023)(Review)

A young nurse comes to a spooky house in the middle of nowhere to care for an old woman, with a crusty groundskeeper – the only other company for either of them. Within this house, strange things happen, and the nurse starts to wonder how much she is actually seeing, and how much is her mind playing tricks on her. You could be forgiven for expecting certain other tropes to follow, but to her credit, feature debut writer-director Marie Alice Wolfszahn delivers an effectively eerie chiller for most of Mother Superior’s short runtime.

Set in 1975, the film follows Sigrun (Isabella Händler), who has come to care for Baroness Heidenreich (Inge Maux), lady of Rosenkreuz Manor in Austria. The Baroness suffers from Parkinson’s Disease and rattles around in her manor house, along with general manservant Otto (Jochen Nickel) whose loyalty is unswerving though the nature of their relationship is unclear. So far, so generic, but the film achieves much of its drama by making Sigrun far from the naive waif she initially appears to be. Händler is a commanding presence, on screen for the vast majority of the film. When necessary, she demonstrates firmness through a clenched expression and decisive yet never demanding tone, while at other points an almost childlike charm spreads across her features. Her slight frame flits through the manor as well as other spaces with a delicate purposefulness. Indeed, Sigrun has her own purposes for her current assignment as the Baroness and the manor possesses a past that might just link to Sigrun’s own history.

History proves to be a central theme of the film, with various references made to Austria’s troubled history. Sigrun’s investigation, in the best tradition of such gothic tales as The Innocents (1961) and Crimson Peak (2015), reveals aspects of Nazi history tied to other sinister movements. Visual motifs of recording pepper the film, as Sigrun searches through files to find documents expected, unexpected and missing. This conceit begins in the opening titles, as the camera crawls across desks strewn with files, notes and cassettes, the credits themselves printed onto these materials. Sigrun narrates the events of her time at Rosenkreuz through a video of a police interview, further adding to the sense of documentation and discovery that propels the narrative.

The investigation conceit makes for an intriguing delivery, effectively captured within a drab mise-en-scene of the decaying mansion that mirrors the Baroness’s decaying body and mind. She is first glimpsed behind a diaphanous curtain, and Maux plays her as something of a Miss Haversham figure, distant from a world she does not participate in. Yet as events develop, more warmth appears from the character, as well as more interest and resolve. As more malevolent aspects appear, Maux imbues the Baroness with an almost hungry air, ironic as she rarely shows interest in eating. As Otto, Nickel strikes a balance between melancholic and menacing, a key conversation taking place between Otto and Sigrun in the film’s second act where Nickel offers nuance behind his sinister goatee.

While there are many strong elements to the film that create an eerie atmosphere and some haunting ambiguity, this is largely undone in the final act. The themes of the film become confused as feminine empowerment is clumsily mashed with occult sects operating within Aryan supremacy. Early suggestions of something transgressive and adventurous are collapsed into an unclear muddle of ideologies, leading the viewer to wonder what the film is saying. More annoyingly, the film has a perfect ending of ambiguity, which is then followed by a coda that clarifies what happened yet manages to somehow further muddle the themes. This is a frustrating ending after much positive material, leading one to wonder why it went wrong. Still, Mother Superior delivers much in its concise running time and hopefully promises more for its talented cast and writer-director in the future.

Vincent’s Archive: Mother Superior (2022)