Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

A lesbian love triangle becomes a schema of sexual power plays in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most harshly stylized and perhaps most significant film. The action is confined to a single set -- the apartment of fashion designer Margit Carstensen, decorated with desiccated mannequins and a mammoth painting of fleshy, galloping nudes -- where the three characters (one is a mute) scheme, complain, and attempt to seduce.