Effigy — Poison And The City

Rating: 7/10

Director: Udo Flohr

Writers: Peer Meter, Udo Flohr, Antonia Roelle

Style: Historical Crime Drama

Rated: PG-13

Time: 1 hour and 24 minutes

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sIi_eniA6c

Review by Mike Szymanski

Female serial killers aren’t common in historical reality or in fiction. So, a film about one of the earliest known real-life murderess is unique and fascinating.

Director Udo Floor put together this fast-paced investigation of the true story of Gesche Gottfried from Bremen, Germany who was convicted of poisoning 15 people, including two of her husbands, three children, her parents and many friends and their children.

The simple explanation for these atrocities never gets properly revealed, but suffice it to know that Miss Gottfried was a bit insane, and lacked any sort of remorse.

The role of Miss Gottfried is painstakingly played by actress Suzan Anbeh who is perhaps best recognized as the French girl who steals Timothy Hutton away from Meg Ryan’s character in the 1085 love story “French Kiss.”

The story is told by bringing two very different women together. Actress Elisa Thiemann plays Miss Cato Bohmer. who is a law clerk assigned to help with the case. She is fighting a world of sexism and taking a job that is geared only for men. She wants to become a lawyer.

But most of her colleagues find it shocking that a woman wants to study law, and is told to go and do some handiwork, and is constantly reminded how she is supposedly inferior. Miss Bohmer for the most part, ignores the insults and soldiers on.

She tells one colleague that “they are allowing women to become lawyers in America, and there are whole universities that teach women to become lawyers.”
 
 The reply was terse, with him saying, “Well you should go and book a trip there right away.”

The two women have a tense relationship, and the murderess almost seduces the lawyer-in-training. And, she almost kills her.

Christoph Gottschalch as Senator Droste is a fine actor, too. He works closely with the odd female who wants to be a lawyer. And although he is at first very dismissive of her, he comes to admire her.

Although it is factual, and told in a very matter-of-fact way, the outcome is intriguing and often stunning. When they open the caskets to test for poisoning, the skies open up and its raining blood. It turns out there is a logical explanation for that really happening.

The murderess is arrested on her birthday. She seems almost nonchalant about it. She is so well known for helping the poor. She asks to stay in the jailhouse for her own safekeeping because she thinks someone is trying to kill her. She feels like some suitors whom she turned down are now against her.

Some of the townspeople already suspect Miss Gottfried for being a scoundrel, even though she know as the “angel of Bremen” for her charity work with the poor. A mother and son who were once on the streets come to visit her in jail.

The closer you get to this woman, the more likely you are to be a victim. The “mouse butter” used as the weapon is lard mixed with arsenic. The death is painful and feels like swallowing a hot poker, one of the investigators explain.

Bremen as a city is a character in itself. A town that is expecting the railroad come through it is now tainted with lurid stories of these gruesome murders.

The script comes from a play by one of the co-writers, Peter Meter. The music by Nic Raine is also notably precise for the mood of each scene in this 1828 time period in Germany. The story is subtitled but it is also dubbed very well in English.

The movie came out in 2019 and already won multiple festival awards, including at the Cypress International, London Independent, Mind the Indie, WorldFest Houston, ReelHeART International, Garden State, San Francisco IndieFest and Dallas Independent film festivals.

The final scene is rather macabre and shocking. Years later, the voiceover has Miss Bohmer (now a full-fledged lawyer) telling what happened to everyone involved. She says that when she travels through Bremen every time she visits an old friend.

I had to look it up, but how this ending is portrayed is completely factual.

“Effigy — Poison And The City” is streaming online and can be rented for 72 hours: http://effigy.film.

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