Film About a Woman Who…

Rainer once asked, “Can the presentation of sexual conflict in film or the experience of love and jealousy be revitalized through a studied placement or dislocation of clichés borrowed from soap opera or melodrama?” Her second feature—in which a tempestuous affair is related via a combination of intertitles, captions, voiceover, still images, and even a few sonatas—provides an unforgettable answer in the affirmative, its mode of address, like its revolving cast, in a constant state of flux. Expanding upon the strategies found in Lives of Performers, it’s a film of provocative incongruities, cryptic compositions, and terrific derangements of established tropes.