The Bath

A young lady, apparently suffering, is taking a bath of capsules. She moves slowly the head, tries to get up, falls again.
This film investigates the problem of excessive drug consumption in western countries, their omnipresence in the daily life and these multiple uses. The chosen kind of bathtub makes reference to the luxurious bathrooms, the sets of Hollywood tragedies bound to pain, suicide, medicines, alcohol.
This film also expresses the loneliness of our nomads’ generations where legal or illegal drug becomes a privileged travel companion.

“The one in which you dive in the medicine tablets first. Complete immersion. The ritual bath in which purification and cleansing is no longer that of water. Even for a split second I did not have the feeling that you [or the personae you embody] are taking treatment or relaxing there. My thoughts were about the impossibility of getting to a state of relaxation, stability, certainty. The relief is never there. Bathing could be such a cliché in portraying the female nude. But the colorful caplets appear to be both a toy and a placebo, they make a strange, crispy sound when you move within. The body is no longer important, but what is important is this constant effort of diving without end or reachable, understandable result. Hopelessness of the body in this situation, like a beetle turned upside down. So vulnerable. So fragile. Even the dark sense of humor you employ in some of your works did not make we get rid of this feeling.” (Aneta Szylak, in Expiry date, 2007)