The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Bitter Tears offers a sensory feast that’s expanded on by the elaborate dialogue, which is poetic even as translated into English, and by the astonishingly sensual and fluid movements of the actors and the camera.

It functions reasonably well as a straightforward, agonized melodrama, but it’s first and foremost a master class—co-taught by famed cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (Goodfellas, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Quiz Show), who got his start with Fassbinder—in the dynamic visual use of a constricted space, and proof that a tiny budget is no excuse.

The intentionally artificial campiness of the story eventually becomes touching, as it's played out against the sound of The Platters singing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and The Great Pretender.

A lesbian love triangle becomes a schema of sexual power plays in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most harshly stylized and perhaps most significant film.

A demanding, harrowing drama of agonized love laced with sardonic humor. [19 Apr 1992, p.9]

Every detail of staging, movement, and utterance is studied, affected to the highest degree, while the lust, anger, malice, and grief are wildly, shockingly real.

Clearly, the director was awash in his fantasies about lesbianism.