Beware of a Holy Whore

A film about film-making with roots in Fassbinder's unhappy experience shooting Whity in Spain. A German unit stalled by financial and technical problems, lethargically brooding in a Spanish hotel, is finally galvanised by the arrival of the manic director (Castel) and laconic star (Constantine) into a frenzy of activity which ends - the film they are making is a denunciation of state-sanctioned violence - in a concerted attack on the director. Tediously self-indulgent yet fascinating, it works better in its exploration of sexual frustrations than in its thesis that cinema should not be allowed to remain 'a holy whore of entertainment'.