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FILM COMMENT
November/December 2002
DRESS CODE: YOU ARE WHAT YOU WEAR IN THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT
by Olga Solovieva
R. W. Fassbinder's 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is all about dressing. It's at the film's center in both the literal sense of clothing the body and in the metaphoric sense of clothing as identity. Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) is a fashion designer and by nature a lover of artifice. Her relationship with her slave-like secretary Marlene (Irm Hermann) and her love affair with a young model named Karin (Hanna Schygulla) are commented upon throughout the film by the trio's various dress styles. At the same time, in a figurative sense, Petra puts on her emotions and moods as if they're fitted costumes.
The film's opening image of two cats on a staircase grooming themselves for the day - the only instance of natural behavior in the film - ironically insinuates the central ambiguity: self-fashioning and artificiality might be the way of the world.
In Fassbinder's film, dress replaces the body. Mask-like makeup and ever-changing wardrobes take on a life of their own, representing the dynamics of the characters' personalities. Naked bodies appear only as the lifeless mannequins in Petra's apartment or as the dull, undifferentiated mass of limbs in the wall-size reproduction of Poussin's painting Midas Giving Thanks to Bacchus in her bedroom.
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is usually regarded as a conscious or self-reflexive melodrama. Indeed, the very title announces a melodramatic affect as the film's subject, and the sober-sounding subtitle "A Case Study" implies the notion of a documentary inquiry. In one interview, Fassbinder stated that his films are about people and life in general but that he expressed himself better through female figures. The exaggerated accoutrements worn by the women in the film function as tools to construct femininity in service of an investigation of melodramatic power relations.
The replacement of the female body by clothes is accentuated visually from the beginning. The camera confronts us with a chaos of flesh in the Poussin reproduction, tracking past the image of an undressed, reclining female body, one arm thrown behind her head in a dramatically exhibitionist pose, an overturned jug at her feet. Lying on the floor is a glittering piece of clothing that seems to flow out of the painting itself, as if to stress the pleasure of its visual consumption, turning it into a fetish.
A sexless plastic doll with Karin-like features and hair also hints at the relationship between the body and clothing in the film. The doll is given to Petra as a birthday present. It is up to her to dress it as she pleases, to turn cold androgyny into glowing femininity - an unequivocal comment on Petra's own dressing procedures. In fact the film's first half hour is taken up by her dressing, putting on makeup, and adjusting a wig that transforms her own androgynous, meager, unattractive body into a showy doll.
Interviews with Fassbinder and his collaborators reveal that the film's women were all intended to represent men from the director's circle, with Petra standing in for RWF himself. Moreover the film's dedication to "someone [male] who became Marlene here" indicates that we are dealing with an unusual instance of cross-dressing-women playing men in drag.
The camerawork reinforces this fusion of genders. Low angles, bright lighting, and shots focusing on the center of the actors' faces create sharper contours that resemble heavier, typically masculine lineaments. In many shots the actors are filmed from behind or in profile so that costumes and hair conceal their faces. Thick makeup, unnaturally positioned wigs, and bushy fur collars, boas, and a headdress combine to obscure the actors' features.
Ambiguities of both gender and power position are further reflected in Petra's clothes, all of which employ references to recognizable elements from costume history. Petra seduces Karin wearing an intricate costume with oriental features. The net of bead chains covering her upper body and the bands tightening the airy material of her long, narrow skirt are reminiscent of Leon Bakst's costume for the protagonist in Scheherazade, performed by Diaghilev's famous Ballets Russes in the Twenties.
The ballet is a harem tragedy concerning the love of the sultan's favorite for her slave. But the pants from the original ballet's costume are transformed here into the tight skirt that constrains Petra's movements so that she can only stumble ridiculously across the room. Her costume reflects her paradoxical emotional situation - on one hand she enjoys strength and a dominant role, on the other she is caught and bound by her own desire. In contrast to Petra's dark and menacing costume, Karin wears a pink dress with soft folds and an opening at her midriff, which suggest vulnerability. Moreover, the bright, metallic band around her neck and arm, with a decorative chain hanging down her back, connotes enslavement. Both women's costumes, with their clearly accentuated quasi-metallic bra cups, strongly allude to sadomasochistic erotic dessous.
As Petra and Karin's love affair progresses and Petra becomes increasingly dependent on her lover, the weakening of her position is reflected in her pageboy-like outfit, which consists of a red wig and a pink costume in which the pants have been modified into a fluffy, fringed feminine skirt. Thus, besides signifying femininity, the costumes also externalize the characters' emotions and make a tangible comment on the film's melodramatic constellations.
The key to Petra and Marlene's puzzling relationship can also be found in the contrast between their dresses, makeup, and hair. Marlene's silent omnipresence and servitude to Petra abruptly cease when Petra, after her relationship with Karin fails, offers her secretary an equal partnership. Marlene packs her suitcase and leaves. Fassbinder explained Marlene's departure as her intrinsic inability to cope with freedom: "Marlene leaves because she had accepted her role as the oppressed and exploited one and because in reality she is frightened by the freedom offered to her."
There is no doubt that Marlene is a masochistic and voyeuristic figure. But if we look closely at her positioning in the mise-en-scène in relation to Petra, she can be seen as the sadistic Petra's counterpart and double. For example, in the dance interlude during Petra's dressing ritual, Petra's white gown and dark wig contrast emphatically with Marlene's dark dress and blond wig-they flow into each other like yin and yang.
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