91 | 4.5 stars | A
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cast: Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla
Synopsis: Petra von Kant, a successful but haughty fashion designer, falls in love with Karin, an aspiring model.
Genre: Drama
Key awards: Berlin International Film Festival – In competition
Runtime: 124 minutes
Language: German
Singapore rating: PG
This review contains spoilers.
Melodrama, as the word is used today, often serves as a pejorative; it mocks the dramatised un-reality of sitcom worlds, makes sappy caricatures of tearful souls, and acknowledges a work’s lack of emotional restraint. To be melodramatic is to reveal, at best, an unhinged psychology; at worst, an absence of it.
This is clearly not the case for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 exceptional opus Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant, known (more famously) in English as The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. True, the film features a reality outside the “outside world”, it contains characters who cry “bitter tears”, and hardly a soul would think it unfeeling or expressionless. Fassbinder, clearly, is an architect of the cathartic. But what is it exactly that elevates his work above the puerile majority, and accords it its sublimity?
Tears, as shall be its abbreviation, tells the sob-story of Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen), famous and chic designer of fashion, twice-married but now divorced. She lives in a luxurious apartment furnished with tapestries, ornaments, and, fitting for a fashionista, mannequins. Another woman resides with her; her name is Marlene (Irm Hermann), and she does Petra’s bidding with absolute obeisance, typing her letters, fetching her tea, and (even!) designing for her.
Why does Marlene do so, being seemingly on par with Petra at least in terms of the latter’s professional capacity? Is she Petra’s lover, madly infatuated with Petra and under her spell? Does she owe Petra a gargantuan debt she now has to service? We are not told much. The film opens with a stairwell upon which two cats reside. After the credits roll, the camera slowly pans to a bed; Petra sleeps, Marlene enters and draws the curtains, earning her a rebuke from Petra. She accepts it graciously and without a word. In fact, no words ever come out of Marlene at all. Is she a mute? Perhaps. It is equally likely, however, that her silence seals the word on her nature, symbolising her complete submission towards an overbearing mistress. Petra is blinded by and ensconced in sunlight, whereas Marlene is a denizen of the background, lurking among the shadows.
Petra’s cousin, Sidonie, comes to visit, and Marlene shows her in. Sidonie laments Petra’s divorce and enquires about her relationship. Petra explains that her unhappiness stemmed from an unequal one, where little right was accorded her. Her ex-husband’s condescension soon turned into disgust, as he would “mount [her]” animalistically, devoid of romantic and intimate connection. Sidonie expresses her pity for Petra, to which Petra sternly replies, “it’s easy to pity, Sidonie, but so much harder to understand. […] Only pity what you can’t understand.”
Such is Petra’s hard-hearted and calculated worldview, made cynical by an inability to experience reciprocation from anyone. Her house is all she has, all she rules over – Tears never once steps out of it. As the pair converse, Marlene silently sketches a design in the background, unseen as far as they are concerned. Except that she hears everything they say, and twice – when Petra expresses profound desire for a person – we see her stop and glance reproachfully, heartbreakingly, at Petra, at the camera.
Karin (Hanna Schygulla), a friend of Sidonie, soon joins their conversation. Karin has just returned to Germany from Sydney, where her husband (a “brute” as she calls him) resides. Petra is lovestruck, and suggests she become a model under her tutelage. Karin agrees, because it is after all an easy and comfortable way to rise far up the social ladder with an established maestro as a mentor. She returns to Petra’s house the following day, much to Marlene’s frustration. They talk, and share things about their childhood. Petra grew up with a silver spoon in her mouth, having the good things in life and somehow taking a special liking towards math. Karin, one of three daughters, was brought up by a stern toolmaker father who one drunk day killed her mother and then himself. She detests math. They are of different social standings – if this were a mediaeval legend, Petra would be Madonna, and Karin the whore.
Quickly, we begin to see the dangers of romantic affiliation between the two. This is precisely what happens, as Karin is invited by Petra to move in, saving her money in comparison to splurging on “expensive” hotels. Petra reaffirms her undying love for Karin with a toast, and Karin acknowledges that by assuring her of her “liking”. Six months later, it is all unravelled in one brief moment. Karin flicks through a magazine, mostly ignoring Petra’s attempts at conversation. When probed, she reveals to Petra an instance of infidelity, detailing her exploits with a black man the previous night. Petra is devastated; between calling Karin a “rotten little whore” she is yet unable to resist giving her a thousand francs to travel abroad to meet her husband. Karin leaves, seemingly forever, her face lit only by contempt and what appears to be venomous, cruel pity for the dejected and downcast Petra. We are back to square one: just Petra, ironically named after Kant – the paragon of rationality, and Marlene.
More details follow – both Petra’s mother and daughter visit her, and Petra on her birthday is reduced to a squirming pile on the floor (her bed is now to one side, occupied by two mannequins locked in embrace), anxiously awaiting phone calls in the hope that they might be from Karin. The family “feign” concern for her, claims an accusatory Petra, stomping on a china set to bits and scaring her delicate daughter into tears. Marlene is thoroughly abused and made to bring in “ten bottles of gin”; as if this could not be more dramatic, Petra’s mother finally learns of her relationship with Karin, and is faintly mortified.
Thus far, a lot of the plot resembles a haute couture imitation of the exploitative paperback romance. Characters dress in bright clothes, often bathed in warm glows. Close-ups of cosmetic faces are featured under grainy film; dialogue comprises virtually the whole of Tears. And yet there is something inexplicable about the film that captures its artistic core and exudes an essence of craftsmanship and intricacy. The camera is steady and pondering, often trailing across the room, taking in lengthy shots of the same spaces framed somewhat differently each time. There are no men in the film, even if the director is one; the characters occupy a space deliberately artificial and static, yet their despairs are painfully and sincerely captured by just how convincing they are in embodying the roles they are given – Petra as a loner-hysteric, Marlene as subservient mute, Karin as youthful vitality, a likely mirror of a young, power-hungry, and capable Petra. The cinematography, work of the famed Michael Ballhaus, is a tapestry of vibrancy, enrapturing the sight with an image of beauty depicting in its very mannerisms the forms and figures of the ugly.
The picture of Petra von Kant is one of solipsism and alienation, echoing certain ideas espoused by the philosopher Bertolt Brecht. Brecht’s alienation relied on defamiliarising the familiar, and what better way to do it than through a hyperrealistic narrative of the bedroom, place of repose, procreation, and, given a morbid outlook, mortality? Petra’s home is a ground for intrusion, from her enemies of class (Karin, the over-achieving and conniving maiden), her relations (Sidonie, whose happy marriage drives Petra further into hysteria), and even her oppression, because Marlene, cursed with silence, cannot even communicate her feelings with her.
Do we sympathise with Petra? At times, definitely. Near the beginning, she stands by a record player, as The Platters waft softly into our ears. Marlene is beckoned, and they waltz to ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’, a hint of real and necessary tenderness. It could be a ritual for them, but its very presence amongst harsh requests to bring in the mail, deliver breakfast, or occasionally “go to hell” makes for a welcome and empathetic reprieve for the viewer. At the end of the film, Petra redeems herself by apologising to Marlene for the abuse she has endured. She promises her equality in the future, and to design together (so they were equals in profession after all!), but Marlene rejects this, packing her suitcase and leaving. ‘The Great Pretender’, another landmark by The Platters, is played. Yet, Marlene is Petra’s inversion, a subject of controlling love just as Petra plays power with Karin but loses, terribly. (Earlier, we see her leaning against a window, agonising, as Petra and Sidonie embrace in the background.) Future viewings, I am sure, will elicit a much wealthier analysis. For now, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, even when casually viewed, embodies an uneasy sadness, because there is no simple catharsis available. Each character is a caricature, but also a mirror for one another. The horrifying dominance of one over the other is one’s love for another exploited. Passion reaches tragic heights, when it flirts with power.
Trailer (Criterion Collection):