[2.9]
Strangely lauded by some fans as their favorite Fassbinder film, I can’t understand how this could even rank in the top of his filmography. I had high hopes for this one, as it not only stars Fassbinder regulars Margit Carstenssen and Brigitte Mira, but also Anna Karina (in the only non-Godard film I’ve seen her in). The film starts promisingly, as a married couple who are having affairs run into each other in their countryside estate, and while managing to have an uncomfortable dinner together, are soon interrupted by the couple’s daughter, who barges into the estate with mischief on her mind. Fassbinder loves playing with bourgeois expectations, and while the married couple, Ariene and Gerhard Christ, seem at-ease with their unusual arrangement (and truthfully, wasn’t it somewhat en-vogue to have open relationships or couple-swap during this time period?), crippled daughter Angela can’t hide her pure contempt for both her parents. Accompanied by her mute caregiver Traunitz, Angela forces the household to play a game of Chinese Roulette. The rules are explained briefly, but the entire third act of the film is made up of the actual game, and I quickly realized I didn’t understand the game at all, which really drains the characters’ responses of most of their significance. It doesn’t help that Fassbinder intentionally makes the characters’ responses vague. Each character describes another character’s answer to a proposed question, so that we are supposed to learn what everyone thinks of each other. But no one names which character they are thinking of when directing their answers, so most of the relationships and grudges remain fairly undecipherable. The game soon takes on art-house pretensions, with characters delivering their lines with biting intensity, even if the words meaning is lost on the audience. All we learn is that these characters all have secrets they keep from each other, and this is the best way for them to air their grievances. It’s certainly a clever idea, but loses steam really quickly. Ultimately, the only relationship with any significance is revealed to be between Angela and her mother Ariene, who she hates furiously (we know this because her answer to “what would you have been during WWII” was “a concentration camp guard”, answering as her mother). Ariene picks up a gun and while it seems like she should shoot Angela, she fires at Traunitz instead. Is it because Traunitz means more to Angela than anyone else there, or because Traunitz has served as a mother role, or because she has a separate grudge against Traunitz (we learn in a throwaway line that this mansion is Traunitz Manor… so she’s the real owner? What does that imply about everyone’s relationships?). Maybe this script is more clever than it seems on first viewing, but at less than 90 minutes long, this movie should NOT have felt this tedious. Of course, the cinematography (by Michael Balhaus) and production design are fabulous. Fassbinder relishes framing his characters in mirrors, and here he plays even more with some modern glass cabinets that are placed in the middle of the room, overlapping people’s faces and reflecting certain elements in wonderfully symbolic gestures. And yet, besides Mira’s marvelously bitchy housekeeper, most of the acting has a deliberate, guarded staginess to it that grows increasingly tiresome. I hate to say it, but Karina is fully wasted here.
burning retina 