Queen's bath

How is it possible that mind and body sometimes seem to live in two different worlds? Aux bains de la reine tries to explore the contradictory feelings of being here and there at the same time. Through the gaze of Elsa, a Portuguese immigrant in Switzerland, the film captures elements of her own personal story while she is back in Caldas Da Rainha, her birthplace. Thus the film becomes a puzzling yet fascinating vertigo that explores the habits of the people visiting the thermal baths like a paradoxical series of animated still lives, while Elsa questions her origins. Slowly, dream and reality begin to shift. Different timelines merge in the labyrinths of the thermal baths. A deeply ironic and deconstructed take on the L'année dernière à Marienbad model, Aux bains de la reine is a haunting film about memory and longing, identity and desire. Sergio Da Costa and Maya Kosa create a world populated by ghosts in which the carefully framed pictures work like gateways to other dimensions of perception. A radically different take on what it means to be floating between two worlds.

Giona A. Nazzaro