The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Petra von Kant is a self-composed, successful upper-class fashion designer, who after two marriages with men falls in love with a woman; the younger, less sophisticated and less ambitious Karin. The latter moves in with Petra and accepts her support and patronage, but also has affairs with men. Their unequal relationship is jealously observed by Petra’s constantly present and always silent assistant Marlene who is totally devoted to Petra though the latter relentlessly bosses her around and humiliates her. When Karin leaves to return to her husband, Petra’s self-control gives way to uncontrolled suffering.
Though men are mentioned, the film creates a highly stylised world inhabited exclusively by women in ever-changing extravagant clothes. It is a similarly female-dominated world, though completely transformed, that we find in Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy.

West Germany, 1972, colour, 124 mins. With English subtitles. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Katrin Schaake.