Storyline

At a dark and foreboding mental asylum for women in pre-World War I Hungary, opium-addicted psychiatrist Dr. Jozsef Brenner (Ulrich Thomsen) volunteers strictly to obtain easy access to morphine. Once inside the nightmarish asylum, where the female patients are routinely abused by the nuns who perform nursing duties and primitive lobotomies occur regularly, Brenner finds himself increasingly obsessed by a particular patient, compulsive writer Gizella Klein (Kirsti Stubo).

Plot Keywords

doctor, addict, nun, mental patient, brooding, disturbing, hungary, mental institution, countryside, drug addiction, mental illness, obsession, sexual repression, abuse, forbidden love, wretched excess, 1910s

Short Review

Brutal torture, doctor-on-patient action, and a good sense of style do not outweigh an outrageously self-serious and exploitative plot. The film is as schizophrenic as the inmates.

Trailer

Streaming Service

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