Les larmes amères de Petra von Kant

One reviewer described Bitter Tears as "a high camp lesbian slumber party", and that sort of sums it up, except that the blankets are like the dressing gown Medea made for Jason's wife - dipped in acid. Fassbinder adapted it from his own play and basically filmed a performance - there's only one set, Petra's apartment, and the characters come and go exactly as in the play, with one crucial difference in the last minute of the movie. All the usual suspects are here; Margit Carstensen has a ball as the Swansonesque Petra, Hanna Schygulla slinks and drawls as Petra's lover, Irm Hermann is at her beaky best as the watchful Marlene. It all culminates in the birthday party to end all birthday parties. A tough one to get into, but you'll never see anything like it anywhere else.

The most ironic aspect of this film is that although directed by a gay director and depicting a woman tormented by frustrated Sapphic passion is that it is actually based on a heterosexual relationship, sort of.

Fassbinder was in fact bisexual and treated the women in his life extremely differently, notably two actresses who both feature in the film: Eva Mattes, to whom he was invariably a model of quiet consideration, and Irm Hermann, who he treated cruelly, invariably giving her the worst parts in his films, perfectly demonstrated by the wordless role of Margit Carstenson's maid who spends the whole proceedings silently looking on with the air of one who has seen it all before.

This film is an elegantly constructed classical tragedy that explores the erotics of cruelty and the manipulation of sexual power. Deeply perverse, its portrayal of the complexity of sexual desire is an inversion of all Hollywood romantic tropes, which are thus exposed as comparatively frivolous and dishonest. It is a lesbian love story set in the fashion industry. Though some may find it slow paced, the rest of us will appreciate the meticulously choreography, the stunning cinematography, and the precision with which the actresses mimic the mimicking of womanhood.

While "The Bitter Tears" is heart-wrenching, devastating tragedy, a greater intellectual high is hard to find in movies or elsewhere. Among the very best films of Fassbinder's career, this movie demonstrates (yet again) that Fassbinder is one of the truly great artists of our time.

Petra von Kant is Rainer Werner Fassbinder at his very best. Every single cut in this film looks absolutely gorgeous, the photography is stunning, and the actors look as if they haven't got a single feeling left to feel - except bitterness. It's also one of Fassbinder's most relentless and uncompromising dramas; the atmosphere of despair and loneliness is intense and effected me deeply, and the humor one finds in some of the director's other films is almost totally absent. Disney fans should probably think twice before viewing.

The one-apartment setting for this film creates a very appropriate sense of claustrophobia and confinement. Fassbinder and actress Margin Carstensen masterfully detail the progression of Petra's deterioration. The schematic framework of this film is not apparent at first; nothing initially indicates Petra's vulnerability and neuroses which makes her ultimate psychic annihilation more poignant. Fassbinder's view of human relationships was egocentric and borders on the cynical---however his work resonates because the approach is so unsentimental and Carstensen is unafraid to make the character unsympathetic, even pathetic as she pines for the return of an absent lover (Schygulla) in the devastating latter half of the film.

The production design and cinematography (by the great Michael Ballhaus-"Bram Stoker's Dracula") are magnificent in that instead of creating great vistas or otherworldly visions, they remain firmly entrenched in a context of confinement and claustrophobia. The artifice (note the outlandish outfits!!!) and overhyped hothouse atmosphere of the film contribute to a feeling of imprisonment; Petra is trapped by her loneliness and neuroses. There's no freedom, no exits, no light, no room to breathe.

The final shot, overlaid with the rock song "The Great Pretender" on the soundtrack, haunts.

A difficult, challenging, at times tedious work, with characters who are human in some very unpleasant ways. Not for an action-movie crowd or people who dig Spielbergian easy answers. "Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant" deserves applause for walking so unflinchingly on the dark and lonely side of the street.