Synopsis
“My favorite
Fassbinder feature […] is a horrific black comedy – a devastating view of bourgeois marriage rendered in a delirious baroque style. Vacationing in Rome, a virgin librarian in her 30s (
Margit Carstensen) meets a macho architect (
Peeping Tom‘s
Karlheinz Bohm) and winds up marrying him. It’s a match made in heaven between a masochist and a sadist, with the husband’s contempt and absurdly escalating demands received by the fragile heroine as her proper due. Suspenseful and scary, excruciating and indigestible, this is provocation with genuine bite – though the manner often suggests a parody of a 50s
Douglas Sirk melodrama..." –
Jonathan Rosenbaum
