Average Rating: 6.9/10
Reviews Counted: 14
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 2
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 1
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Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 3,633
This tale of intermingled love and hate is directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and is the 13th of the 33 films he made in his short life. It explores the universal dynamics present in close human relationships, even lesbian ones. Petra Von Kant (Margit Carstensen) is a fashion designer. Some time ago, she divorced the husband she no longer loved. Until recently, she has been in a fairly satisfactory S & M relationship with her assistant. When she develops an obsession with her fashion model,
Oct 5, 1972 Wide
Mar 29, 2005
Wellspring Media Inc.
All Critics (16) | Top Critics (2) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (3) | DVD (2)
Even those who love pain will be frustrated by The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most harshly stylized and perhaps most significant film.
The DVD cover tagline is "sex is the ultimate weapon," but of course, it's only about sex at all insofar as it's about the relationship of sex to everything else.
A brilliantly directed and performed psychodrama.
Irresistibly soporific.
Features an all-female cast, all uniformly smashing.
'A brilliant depiction of the manipulation inherent in every relationship and the lengths to which people will go to stay with the ones they love.'
Not exactly the most comfortable film of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's career.
Wildly overrated
It's incredible how Fassbinder was able to expertly use one single set and frame it in all ways possible to please his deliciously black humour in order to tell this masochistic story of an obsessive fashion designer and her women.
July 31, 2011Super Reviewer
My favourite Fassbinder film so far by a mile! It takes a good script and great actors to make a film that is essentially shot in just one room feel exciting. Fassbinder really arrives with this film, so to do his regular actresses. Margit Carstensen is beautifully loathsome as Petra von Kant and Hanna Schygulla plays
March 28, 2011Super Reviewer
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