Roleta Chinesa

Like most Fassbinder films, it's seemingly simple, but there's a lot too it when you walk a bit closer. This one sets up a great tragicomic situation: a disabled teenager manipulates her parents each to bring their lover to their summer mansion for the weekend. When the father arrives with his lover (Anna Karina, in a very quiet role), he finds his wife pinned to the floor by her boy toy. A bit later the daughter arrives with her caretaker (and possibly her lover?) who is deaf and mute. Mrs. Kast and her blonde son, Gabriel, take care of the mansion, cook, and so forth. Kast is played by Brigitte Mira, who was so wonderful two years earlier in Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul. She's a lot more cruel in this one.

With the situation as it is, their true characters quickly rise to the surface. The parents get the most time; father is loving in his way, but his love is probably only a result of the guilty feelings he has towards his daughter. Mother, on the other hand, is quite the psycho. At one point, as she sees her daughter lumbering along on her crutches from a second story window, she picks up a pistol and aims it at her daughter's back. She uses no euphemisms: her daughter, she believes, has ruined her life.

Fassbinder's direction is exquisite. His framing is so complex, but it's invented to look simple. The simple set might be called stagey by those who are not paying enough attention. When the four lovers meet, Fassbinder circles the camera around them as they pace around each other, creating a dizzying dance. Peer Raben's gorgeous and unique music also should be pointed out.

Not everything works out perfectly. The titular game is an interesting idea to do on film. The eight characters split into two groups, the first picks a person in the house and the second has to guess after they've asked a certain number of questions. I think Fassbinder has a difficult time making the questions and answers meaningful for the film as a whole. These exchanges get a little ponderous as a result, and the only thing that keeps the sequence alive is Raben's score. Like I said, it was quite a daring thing to do, so the fact that it doesn't work out perfectly doesn't harm the film too much. 9/10.

"Chinese Roulette", directed by R.W. Fassbinder (1976), is kind of a minimalist work, and, as it turns out, the quite right surrounding for a very special form of social terrorism as executed by a child.

Also simple is the structure of the characters - and the more impressive, when you see during the movie which Eigen-dynamics it discloses: Gerhard Christ and his wife Ariane have a marriage that is founded on money. He has a girlfriend - the Parisian Irene, she has a boyfriend - the husband's collaborator Kolbe. But these are not the only couples in the movie: There is also mother Kast and son, Gabriel. And then there is an informal couple, Gerhard and Arianes daughter Angela and her nurse Traunitz. (Watch the names: Christ, Ariane vs. Irene, Gabriel, Angela. Who is the devil? The arch-angel Gabriel's mother or daughter Angela "the angel"?).

Since everybody lied on everybody telling one another that they are going to Oslo, Milano and to the Zoo, they all meet quite unexpectedly in the family-castle. Now, everybody is unable to have his privacy with his respective boy- and girlfriend. So, one drinks and is bored until the handicapped daughter Angela desires to play "Chinese Roulette" (a play that has been invented by R.W. Fassbinder as a verbal analogy to Russian Roulette). Fassbinder said concerning this movie in an interview in my translation: "I think that relationships between humans are largely defined by conflicts. If I sit at my desk and just write something down without reflecting much, then there will probably be written more about conflicts than about attentions between humans".

Believing that her parents' longtime extramarital affairs caused her physical ailments, a teenage cripple arranges for both sets of adulterers to unexpectedly meet at a country home in this Rainer Werner Fassbinder thriller. The film is gloriously photographed by Michael Ballhaus, with the camera giddily spinning around to reflect nervousness when the four adulterers first meet, and the very deliberate framing (some actors turned to faced the camera; others not) throughout adds tension. The juice of the film comes from both the girl's initially elusive motives and the sense of emotions about to explode; at one point, her own mother almost shoots her through an open window. Oddly, the film never explores why the daughter has more hostility towards her mother (and vice versa) than her father, but this aside, the only significantly underwhelming aspect of the film is the title game. Nowhere near as dangerous as Russian roulette on the surface, Chinese roulette -- a game that seems to only exist in the film's universe -- is merely a guessing game of sorts, albeit one in which deep resentment is able to surface. Whatever the case, the film is a surprisingly tense ride considering the minimal sets and small cast. It also offers food for thought in terms of who is to blame and whether indeed the girl's parents brought the situation upon themselves through emotionally (if maybe not physically) injuring their daughter.

Chinese Roulette is a film fraught with cruelty and downright evil, lurking beneath sinister grins and betrayed by disconcerting laughs, waiting to be inflicted on everyone. Revolving around a married couple who are both having affairs, it's also a film of fraudulence and dishonesty. Just like Frau Kast's reaction after seeing the beggar who's been pretending to be blind all along taking off his glasses, the couple's, Kolbe and Ariane, reaction at seeing each other with their respective lovers is laughter; just jarring laughter, followed by silence and awkward intimacy. Then, themes of questionable and twisted morality are on full display, as we see Fassbinder toying with our views of what's right and wrong regarding fractured marriage and infidelity, while instilling it with a provocatively dark comedic tone in the process.

Michael Ballhaus's camera constantly moves around people, going to and fro and switching the perspectives between them. Often through over-the-shoulder shots, which are predominantly used throughout, we see the four characters perceive each other's feelings while their minds concurrently preoccupied by the same thoughts and concerns. In a Persona-like style, Michael Ballhaus' blocking uses the profile of one actor to cut off the other, so that each two actors of the four seem to occupy the same space at the same time. We also get shots through glass and see-through objects, and doors unlocked or left ajar. Yet, and as Angela says, "Eavesdroppers often hear the false truth," what our characters see in, or hear about, each other couldn't be further from the truth, which is demonstrated by shallow, medium close-up shots, where a certain character is showcased in crisp focus and from the chest up, yet somewhat also noticeably distant.

"In their hearts, they blame me for their messed-up lives." In a world where love is neither important nor fulfilling, and marriage is as brittle as glass, it is hardly surprising that it has stony-hearted and awfully terrible parenting. The cheating spouses' daughter, Angela - who's disabled, walking with crutches - has one of the revoltingly cruelest mother-daughter relationships I've seen depicted in film. Nothing comes close to it save for the one in Autumn Sonata. However, in Bergman's film, mistreatment and neglect built up a charge over the years, exploding in the form of spitefully hurtful remarks, whereas here we're witnessing the build-up, displayed growing in silent insinuations, until eventually blowing up - at the wrong target. In the climactic protracted sequence of the titular guessing game, the film contorts itself into a game of allusions to the characters' identities. This is where the film is at its most suffocating and claustrophobic despite the plenty of room given to decipher each enigmatic character. Personally, I feel that what's revealed about them leaves much to be desired, but that's perhaps its intended purpose. Hence, the ambiguous ending.

It's insane how every main character in Chinese Roulette is hateful and despicable. Like, there's not a single one of them that could be called 'nice'. Nevertheless, it's easy to understand their deeds and comprehend their feelings. They feel like flawed, real people; incredibly horrible but real. Neither the husband nor the wife shows a visible sign of remorse whether towards one another or their daughter. Instead, they couldn't care less about any of these matters, and their actions appear to be solely driven by lust or unabashedly ruffling each other's feathers. Though undoubtedly a victim of a dysfunctional family and one whose only outlet to speak is through sign language with her governess, Trauntiz, Angela herself certainly ain't no angel. She even has some sort of a malevolent omniscient ability, enabling her to see through the rest of the characters and ultimately seems to have the upper hand on them. That's not mentioning there's a clear sense of creepiness about her, symbolised by her dolls. Kast is a cranky old woman confined to household chores who looks at anyone with a jaundiced eye, Gabriel Kast is a murky character trapped in adolescence and adulthood. He's the only one besides Angela, however, who seems to seek the truth, which explains the odd bond between the two of them.

Chinese Roulette is a bleak and distressing chamber piece that demands contemplation, but it's surprisingly accessible due to the stylish camera work and fleshed-out, if deliberately vague, characters. Set in a world of heinous people hiding their deep-rooted nastiness with lies and silence, the film shows an edifice of fascism of family, which they built, coming down upon them. Chinese Roulette also has a warped sense of humour at play, manifested in its absurdist undertones, and further reinforced by a light classical music. It's a film that doesn't stop at seeing the parents' failures paid for by the children, and decides to offer them a chance to revenge themselves in the most wicked of ways. Crude, cold and intellectual, my first Fassbinder sure won't be the last and most likely would serve as a springboard into his filmography.

Chinese Roulette is about a marriage. An upper class couple split up for the weekend, each has told lies to the other regarding their destination, however both end up at the same destination with lovers in tow, the schloss in the countryside. This has been carefully machinated by their young disabled daughter who has known of the affairs of her parents for many years.

The scene where Herr Christ and lover walk in on Madame Christ and lover is pretty good, there's initial shock, then they manage to dissociate from their roles and have a good chuckle about it together. Thus begins the weekend.

The daughter arrives and insists on a game of Chinese Roulette, this is an interesting little game. You get two teams of four people, the first team picks a person from the other in a secret conclave. The second team then has to guess who is the person in their team who has been chosen by asking nine questions, of the form, "if this person was a magazine, which magazine would they be?". Anyway the game gets pretty cruel if you want to play it that way, "Which would be the most fitting method of execution for the person in question" for example. You could find titillation in the game by praising someone without them knowing who you are referring to or dark joy in deeply insulting them.

The daughter has arranged it all to grind the adults down. I suppose if there is one message of the film it's that if you breed adders you shouldn't be surprised if they grow up and eat you. The couple have clearly not provided for their daughter (other than materially speaking - she has whatever she wants, chocolates dolls, pretty dresses &c).

The game is an exercise in cruelty, a couple of the answers being pretty good. However there is a lot of insecurity, everyone is wondering if the person who is being described as an apple with a worm inside it is them, furthermore the person answering the question is often blatantly prejudiced and is not understanding the person they are speaking about.

There are some pretty bizarre things going on, the butler-type Gabriel writes unsound doggerel and reads it aloud to the couples (previously only one couple at a time). There are references to a character we never see, strange complicities, unexplained relationships.

One thing you can say though is that the movie is shot brilliantly, there are some wonderful circular shots (trademark of Scorsese and Fassbinder regular collaborator Michael Ballhaus) where the camera orbits the characters, lots of shots of people reflected off glass or cut in two by doorways, some exquisite framing. Perhaps the most exquisite movie I've seen in visual terms. The score too is of a very high calibre.

I take it as a pretty mystical film, one scene that is great is the daughter sat in her bed talking to Gabriel, the camera is at floor level just behind a row of the dolls which she has arranged as a kind of adoring audience for her. You feel like one of the dolls really, it's quite strange. Certainly Fassbinder is railing against certain bourgeois modes here. The characters are isolated by their feelings of self-worth, their deceptions, their victim status, and their sharp tongues, there's no love anywhere. In every relationship in the movie I felt as if it were one possessing the other, as if a trinket.

It's nastiness all around, almost an exercise in misanthropy, another reviewer referred to it as an exercise in deception as a survival tactic. I recently titled a review of mine, "A manual on how to live", well this really is "A manual on how not to live". It's as disparaging to victims as to victimisers. One of Fassbinder's other movies was called Satan's Brew and I really think this one could have been as well .