Chinese Roulette

Forever experimenting with form and tone, Fassbinder ventures into Edward-Albee-meets-Gothic-thriller territory with this account of the Christs (Alexander Allerson and Margit Carstensen), an affluent Munich couple whose polio-stricken daughter, Angela (Andrea Schober), brings them together at a country house with their respective lovers. The climactic set piece is the title game, a nasty pretext for forced truth-telling and hateful revelations (Angela suggests her mother would’ve been Commandant at Bergen Belsen), which Fassbinder himself liked to play at parties. Brilliantly shot by Michael Ballhaus with a constantly roving camera, the film keeps shifting the POV to establish the subjectivity of experience. Featuring Anna Karina as Herr Christ’s mistress and Brigitte Mira as the housekeeper.