This is very much a play-like film, and claustrophobically set in one bedroom with a small cast of only women. This is where Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) lives, and where she dictatorially treats her secretary Marlene (Irm Hermann) not so much as a servant but as a slave. She's a fashion designer with naked models as furniture and a mural of Poussin's Midas and Bacchus as a backcloth. She's had two husbands, had a daughter by the first who's away at boarding school, although she seems to be essentially bisexual. This film is mainly about her bisexual relationship with Karin (Hanna Schygulla), with whom she's madly in love but Karin doesn't feel at all the same way – she merely likes Petra.
Karin is married although her abusive husband is in Sydney for some time, from where Karin has just returned. Petra, in love at first sight, says that Karin should be a model. As with other films by Fassbinder, there's a difference between social backgrounds here, and Petra comes from a stable middle-class family whereas Karin's working-class father killed his wife while drunk and then killed himself. Petra has her move out of her hotel and in with her. She stays there for some months but Karin wants to go to Frankfurt when she learns her husband's there, and Petra – now drunk – gets Marlene to take her to the airport.
In another scene the bed appears to have disappeared and Petra is sprawled on the carpet drinking and eagerly expecting Karin to phone her every time there's a call. It's her birthday and her daughter Gaby (Eva Mattes) joins her, along with her cousin Sidonie Katrin Schaake) and her mother Katrin (Katrin Schaake). Throwing a tantrum, she smashes her presents.
Although Petra is later repentent, Marlene leaves her, inexplicably taking a gun with her.
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