Baden Baden

Despite what its title might sug­gest, Rachel Lang’s Baden Baden has lit­tle to do with the quaint Ger­man spa town. Instead, it is a pun on the word ​‘bath’ – appro­pri­ate, as much of the film focus­es on guile­less free spir­it Ana (Salome Richard) and her self-moti­vat­ed mis­sion to replace her grandmother’s tub with a shower.

The film opens with Ana steal­ing a pro­duc­tion company’s rent­ed Porsche to dri­ve back to Stras­bourg, her home­town. From then on, her sum­mer unfolds in a series of dis­joint­ed vignettes. The frag­men­tary struc­ture requires patience. It’s fair to say that it fits the tone of the film, which evokes a lan­guid, aim­less summer.

Plot ele­ments are intro­duced with much fan­fare, then fade out, nev­er to be men­tioned again. There are occa­sion­al jar­ring for­ays into the sur­re­al fea­tur­ing a naked Ana wan­der­ing through a gar­den. It’s pos­si­ble that these are sup­posed to serve as a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Ana’s con­fu­sion and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, but their infre­quent appear­ances mean that their sig­nif­i­cance remains elusive.

It is a tes­ta­ment to direc­tor Lang, how­ev­er, that she man­ages to cap­ture the help­less feel­ing of watch­ing some­one you love grow old and dete­ri­o­rate. And she does this with­out resort­ing to sen­ti­men­tal­ism. This is owed in part to Claude Gen­sac who excels in the role of Ana’s world-weary yet mis­chie­vous grand­moth­er. Equal­ly notable are the bath­room scenes fea­tur­ing Ana and Gre­goire, a bemused handy­man. It’s appar­ent from the out­set that the urgency with which Ana tack­les her grandmother’s bath­room has lit­tle to do with home improvement.

The film floats around this sym­bol­ic act, a reflec­tion of Ana’s attempts to estab­lish some sem­blance of order in the face of infi­nite uncer­tain­ty. Despite this, the film ends on a note of pos­i­tiv­i­ty rather than despair. It says that accept­ing chaos is some­times more pro­duc­tive than resist­ing it.