Chinese Roulette

Made after Fassbinder disbanded his 'stock company' of actors, Chinese Roulette is quite different from his earlier bourgeois satires. The script is boldly non-naturalistic: a crippled girl connives to get herself, both her parents and their respective lovers to a country house all at the same time, for a weekend of intense embarrassments. And the style, all double reflections and shifting points of view, suspends the cast like flies in an amber of deceptions, neuroses and panics. The humour fits the cruelty as a boot fits a groin.