Distraught and humiliated after being left by her lover of many years, the transsexual Elvira is comforted and looked after by her friend Zora, with whom she embarks on a journey that confronts her with her childhood, her time as a husband and father and eventually with the man for whom she decided to become a woman. Rather than helping her to come to terms with the body she finds herself in, the encounters she has along the way deepen her loneliness and despair.
One of Fassbinder’s most personal and moving films of which many resonances can be found in João Pedro Rodrigues’ To Die Like a Man.
West Germany, 1978, colour, 124 mins. With English subtitles. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Volker Spengler, Ingrid Caven, Gottfried John.
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