One evening in Munich, an elderly cleaning lady (Brigitte Mira) escapes from the rain into a bar frequented by immigrants. To her surprise, the jukebox plays an old German tango and a handsome young Moroccan (El Hedi ben Salem) asks her to dance... So far, so like a fairy tale, but this tenderest of romances is soon exposed to the brutal reality of racism and ageism.

This unconventional love story combines lucid social analysis with devastating emotional power. Not a shot is wasted in this bold reworking of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, which unfolds with gripping simplicity.

“Both a wonderful demonstration of how film form creates meaning – the isolating framing and composition, the deliberately stiff performance style – and a moving, unusual odd-couple romance that highlights the hypocrisies and prejudices of society. This reworking of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955) manages to be both more emotionally involving (while somehow remaining detached) and much bleaker than the original.” David Morrison

“Fear Eats the Soul is a sad, brilliant expression of Fassbinder’s micropolitics.” Alonso Díaz de la Vega

“No director has deconstructed and rearticulated a genre like Fassbinder and melodrama.” Mike Mashon

Film	Year	Director
L'Argent	1983	Robert Bresson
A City of Sadness	1989	Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Fear Eats the Soul	1974	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Gertrud	1964	Carl Th. Dreyer
Muriel ou Le Temps d'un retour	1963	Alain Resnais
La PRISE DE POUVOIR PAR LOUIS XIV	1966	Roberto Rossellini
The Headless Woman	2008	Lucrecia Martel
Sicilia!	1998	Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub
Late Spring	1949	Yasujirō Ozu
MISTÉRIOS DE LISBOA	2010	Raúl Ruiz

James Quandt

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