Life, Love & Celluloid

Originally made to chronicle the Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, this documentary was directed by Juliane Lorenz, who was Fassbinder's wife, editor, and frequent collaborator. Although there are some wonderful still photos of the legendary filmmaker, there is very little archival footage and not all that much about Fassbinder himself. There are many talking heads (curators, actors, academics) who discuss Fassbinder briefly and then segue into mostly embarrassing diatribes about independent cinema and its future. A young German actor has an inexplicable almost-love scene with Veronika Voss's Rosel Zech; there are some equally inexplicable aerial shots of Berlin, Hollywood, and New York with jarring piano accompaniment.

I enjoyed the odd but highly entertaining performance by a cabaret singer whose song manages to include the title of every Fassbinder film (no mean feat). And the staging of several of Fassbinder's theatrical scripts must be seen to be believed (they are campily bad, but I suspect that's due to clumsy translation). Given her knowledge of and access to Fassbinder, it's surprising that Lorenz was not able to create a film worthy of the filmmaker's prolific and daring career. At the Harvard Film Archive this Saturday, October 23, at 7 p.m. The filmmaker will be in attendance.

-- Peg Aloi