Tags : Cinelogue

As Margot enters and leaves her apartment to visit the local chemist, for Valium and sex, the prying eyes of her in-laws often watch through a window high up above street level… all these visual and aural cues make the whole thing feel so like Hitchcock that it adds immense potency to the scenes where Fassbinder immediately strips away the excesses and bombards us with the raw practical consequences of this malaise. Much of the film skirts close to spoof but that only makes the quiet scenes of genuine loneliness or violence all the more pointed and distressing. After all, Hitchcock interjected scenes of madness with, um, car chases and fetishised romance. He never just quietly sat the camera down to watch a woman, almost absentmindedly, slice open a wrist before registering, with terror, the full extent of her actions.

Mother Küsters is a character who is frequently puzzled (you can see it in her face), yet constantly striving to widen her range of perception as she bounces like a pinball between colorful, yet exploitative and ideologically narrow characters. Fassbinder’s tendency to draw his characters allegorically actually works to good effect here, all of those characters being abstracted for satirical aims, except, of course, our protagonist who comes across as both a tragic mother figure and, more importantly, a feeling, flesh and blood woman.

The film’s climax is precipitated by nothing in particular, except the accumulated existential weight that Kurt has put on. It’s also preceded by a physical exam during which his physician tells Kurt his ailments, including weight gain, may mean he simply smokes a little much. Back at the Raab household, Kurt is having trouble getting the television set to work properly as his wife and her friend are discussing a ski trip. The box simply won’t work, so he is forced to listen to their frivolous gab. When his wife leaves the room, Kurt surreptitiously grabs a large candlestick and proceeds to show us how he runs amok.