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The Criterion Channel Presents: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder really knew how to make the most of a set-piece, huh?
There is one scene under the opening credits of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant that is a distinct exterior shot. Everything else across a great span of time takes place in the gaudy apartment of the titular character, adorned with nude statuettes and a giant painting on the wall behind the bed of the Nicolas Poussin piece Midas and Bacchus -a highly symbolic work for the purposes of the story, uniting the famous Greek hedonist with the king so ubiquitous with wealth and status he could turn anything into gold. Their avatars are women here, but function in a similar way, including in their curious relationship to each other.
It is somewhat comforting to see a movie from 1972 that is not only about a lesbian romance but a very messy lesbian romance. It’s nearest analogue may be The Killing of Sister George from four years prior, but that film was a lot more campy and treated its same-sex relationships as taboo novelty. Petra von Kant though does approach it more humanely, more sincerely and with pangs of real tragic romance, even if its protagonist is a narcissist who is toxically codependent.
Margit Carstensen plays this character, a popular and successful fashion designer in Bremen -a widow since the death of her husband who lives with her assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann), who is always close at hand to transcribe for her and heed her harsh demands. When Petra is introduced to Karin (Hanna Schygulla), newly returned from seven years in Australia, she is instantly and passionately smitten with the younger woman, encouraging her to model and eventually to move into her home. Though the relationship proves not as sturdy as Petra would like it to be.
Certainly it is a very intriguing infatuation. On the one hand Karin is very beautiful, but it is not so skin-deep. A long portion of the film is spent on Petra and Karin talking about themselves sitting on Petra’s bed which is where a lot of the movie takes place. Their stories are dissimilar, Karin had a difficult childhood beset by tension and neglect from her parents while Petra’s was much more stable and conventional -a subtle note of class distinction informs this, and Petra is only more attracted to Karin because of her troubles. One thing that does connect the two women is their fashion sense and the elegance with which they -and especially Karin- can wear unusual-seeming dresses, which they are in for the duration of this conversation, as though they were preparing to leave for a social night out when in actuality Karin is just practicing.
A key part of Petra’s look are her wigs. She wears four of them of different sizes and colours across this movie, each standing in for an act of the story and reflecting her mood, from a casual brunette piece to bold and black (unavoidable) to fierce red (the height of her amours) and finally a blonde one that doesn’t really suit her the way the others could (her most awkward, lowest point). It is a very neat bit of visual symbolism that works in tandem with Carstensen’s performance choices. And it always sets her apart in a scene.
The other major bit of symbolism is of course the painting always looming over her and which is used well by Fassbinder’s camera. Though he doesn’t draw attention to it through stylized angles or anything, his composition makes sure that it enforces the mood or theme of a moment. During that long conversation, a seduction on Petra’s part, the nude woman in the bottom left corner is prominently displayed. Yet after Karin hears word that her husband has now come back from Australia too and is preparing to leave Petra (this after a talk that exposed her heterosexual infidelity with a black man, whose race is uncomfortably fetishized), she is framed in relation to the nude male of the portrait and his (rather small) penis.
It is a critical sequence of the movie that sees the carefully manicured attitude of Petra slip, before completely evaporating. Karin could be accused of a little bit of exploiting her affections, but Petra either projected a lot that wasn’t there or believed she could woo Karin closer to her, and when Karin finally has the ability to leave it breaks Petra, who desperately begs for her to stay and then spends a matter of months grieving and unable to move on, lashing out and spewing bile at her relatives over it in the last act. Karin recognized before Petra did however that it was a sense of control more than love that Petra craved over her. That she saw herself as a kind of maternal figure as well, attracted to Karin as someone whom she could mold and groom. It reveals a lot about the nature of Petra’s desires, and she does come to understand them herself by the end and move on -her maturity symbolized by the absence of a wig- and she actually turns down an opportunity to see Karin.
Through all of this, Marlene is a curious constant. She types away in the background through a lot of the discreet talk, and Fassbinder focuses the camera on her in interesting moments, suggesting that despite her treatment, she harbours feelings for Petra -but perhaps seeing how things go with Karin, exits a possible repeat of such a relationship at the end.
Petra von Kant was Fassbinder’s ninth film in a period of four years -famously his career only lasted thirteen before his untimely death at the age of thirty-seven, but he managed to make forty films (as well as various plays and television projects) in that time. It is remarkable then that so much care and focus is put into this movie, a fascinating character study ahead of its time and one of his best.

Criterion Recommendation: Origin (2023)
There may not be any better movie of the past decade more perfect for a showcase of Black History Month than Ava DuVernay’s incredible Origin -perhaps her least-seen but most important movie. An adaptation of a thesis more than a conventional story, it follows the journey of journalist Isabel Wilkerson, played by a phenomenal Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, in the research of what would become her powerful nonfiction book on the subject of caste, uniting systems of prejudice and inequality from across history and around the world, notably slavery and its tethers of racism in the United States, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Germany, and caste discrimination in India, under the banner of a single framework of division. Illustrated through testimonials and reenactments, source referencing, and even details of Isabel’s own life, the movie presents and in creatively visceral terms a grand canvas that is nonetheless tangible and intimate; and which doesn’t forget the drama that is its engine. It is stupendously compelling through DuVernay’s filmmaking and Ellis-Taylor’s performance, openly discussing political themes in a way so few Hollywood films are brave enough to do. And it is a movie that can affect real change, one that ought to be shown in schools. A bump from Criterion certainly couldn’t hurt it either.

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