‘Mother Superior’ Bewitches [BHFF 2022 Review]
Marie Alice Wolfszahn’s Mother Superior, which she also wrote, opens with diegetic credits by way of files and logs. The limited cast of Wolfszahn’s debut unspools between conspicuously feminist clippings and reports. Heavy breathing and a macabre occult score, akin to something like Argento’s Suspiria and the hoarse breaths of its headmistress, overlay the opening moments. A pastiche of both style and substance, Mother Superior soon abandons its pretext of amounting to anything narratively complete, for both better and worse during its 70-minute runtime.
Mother Superior is set in 1975, an era where the specters of war and misogyny reign supreme. Nurse Sigrun Fink (Isabella Händler) arrives at The Rosenkreuz Manor to care for the aging Baroness Mrs. Heidenreich (Inge Maux). Wolfszahn frames Mother Superior through an analog interrogation. Not seen as it happens, but through a file room television set, suggesting that the tape, like the whole of Mother Superior, is temporally unclear. From the start, it’s clear Mrs. Heidenreich’s body was discovered badly burned after Sigrun’s arrival. And Sigrun, for her part, is being interrogated for her alleged involvement. It’s an unfortunate narrative conceit, sapping Mother Superior of its grounded, earthly tension.
Still, Wolfszahn’s first feature is abounding in gothic grandeur. The Rosenkreuz Manor is a spectacle of a setting, an homage to the towers early Hammer films once erected. At once accessible and oppressively grand, Wolfszahn plays with July Skone and Stefan Voglsinger’s chilling discordant score to cast every shadow, every wing of the manor, in enticing tension. Sigrun wanders aimlessly at first. Aside from caring for Mrs. Heidenreich’s Parkinson’s and bouts of insomnia, she creeps and skulks in the night, shifting out of view like a specter herself.
Soon, storytelling conventions briefly introduce themselves, giving Sigrun an actual goal, contextualizing her time in the manor and eventual interrogation. Sigrun, a foster child, hopes to find an answer about her real parents. Her blood lineage, as Mrs. Heidenreich might say. Heidenreich, an antecedent Aryan maternity nurse, has been linked to a hospital where Sigrun’s mother might have been. As noted by the detectives interrogating her, Sigrun hoped to find a “Nazi archive” somewhere in the manor.
Elements of race, war, and the sins of a nation are only peripherally alluded to. Principally, Mother Superior is a yarn of folk feminism. Black magic, pagan iconography, and disorienting visages of women in white and growls in the night give credence to whispers of women’s power, the virile weakness of the planets, the power of cosmic eggs, and goddesses of the moon.
Early in the film, Heidenreich outlines for Sigrun several core commandments to abide by while at Rosenkreuz. Meat is reserved for Friday. Wednesdays are for rest. Heidenreich forbids Sigrun from leaving the grounds. Mother Superior, for its part, is bound to the commandments of Robert Eggers and Goran Stolevski. Knotted hearts and Hellbender symbolism punctuate transitions and the passage of time. Blood is spilled and chants are cast. Sigrun is beholden to stylistic demands, responding by dint of the vision, not rationality or interest in her own wellbeing.
It’s a common trope among gothic, arthouse fare, and resultantly, Mother Superior won’t work for everyone. Yet, at its core, it is both reverent of the past with a wise eye toward the future of horror storytelling. Like Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, it feels like a portentous and moody campfire tale, and it’s remarkably effective at that. Wolfszahn is telling stories within stories, and while style reigns supreme, Mother Superior succeeds as a brief, bewitching affair.
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Mother Superior
Summary
A gothic love letter that plays with form and style, Mother Superior is a haunting, albeit unfocused, foray into the cosmic occultism.
