Alexander Allerson says he's going to Oslo. Wife Margit Carstensen says she's going somewhere else. When they both show up at the same rural hotel with their lovers, there's uncomfortable laughter. How awkward! When their crippled daughter, Andrea Schober, shows up, having arranged the mix-up, there's a lot of frozen-faced nastiness and sexual swapping going on in this Rainer Werner Fassbinder movie.
This examination of loveless, eternal, heterosexual marriage is charmingly shot by camera man Michael Ballhaus. It's pick pick pick at the scabs of normative relationships that the director delights in, a series of straw-man indictments of a system that, like all human institutions, is flawed. There's not a sign of anything better. Having made his points, the auteur retires victorious.
This examination of loveless, eternal, heterosexual marriage is charmingly shot by camera man Michael Ballhaus. It's pick pick pick at the scabs of normative relationships that the director delights in, a series of straw-man indictments of a system that, like all human institutions, is flawed. There's not a sign of anything better. Having made his points, the auteur retires victorious.