[Irm] Hermann gives the best performance of the film—and she does so without saying a single word. In my opinion, it’s one of the best performances in Fassbinder’s legendary run,

| Jul 16, 2024

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant has the trappings of an ancient story of Gods and monsters: a stiff poetry of immeasurable beauty, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s magnificent romance transcends human drama.

| Jun 6, 2024

It is a lucid, beautiful work of innovation which hides its fondness for its characters under a cloak of august formalism.

| Mar 4, 2024

Handsome with a touch of aloofness... it's a quintessentially Fassbinder portrait of doomed love, jealousy, and social taboos, bouncing between catty melodrama and naked emotional need.

| Sep 8, 2023

An emotionally existential journey through the cycle of love, Fassbinder’s film conveys an incredible power for empathy, and a profound understanding of deeply human characters.

| Aug 3, 2023

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is dazzling in the brittle brilliance of its execution, the precision of its structure and movement, the total, hermetic self-containment of the tiny world it creates.

| Jun 27, 2023

Take it or leave it, it is a real contribution to technique to latter-day European cinema.

| Jun 27, 2023

I can see why Fassbinder's slow, formal expositions, tinged with his Pinter-like relish for the sinister side of lifemanship, should currently be seducing all comers. But here his deliberateness... looks very like a policy of smirking non-commitment.

| Jun 27, 2023

At least the decadent decor and Von Sternberg photography makes for a more interesting looking Fassbinder film than usual. But I am still resistant to Fassbinder's monotonous didacticism.

| Jun 27, 2023

"Petra" was quite daring in depicting same-sex love before it was acceptable. And Michael Ballhaus' cinematography is strikingly bold.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 17, 2022

Bitchy, catty, melodramatic and pretentious, it's an invigorating chamber piece that swells to bursting within its claustrophobic confines.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 29, 2020

The best movie on role playing, power, and human suffering that I have seen in a long time.

| Apr 27, 2020

Fassbinder's style, perfectly shown in this film, is based on a well constructed script in which the splendid dialogue stands out. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Jul 18, 2019

Fassbinder's acute understanding of human desire and pain ensures a strange, haunting tension throughout.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 3, 2016

Like so many films these days, this one turns out to be more interesting when you get away and think about it.

| Aug 4, 2015

[VIDEO ESSAY] Brecht meets Douglas Sirk and Joseph Mankiewicz ("All About Eve") in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's delectable adaptation of his five-act stageplay, a lesbian triangle of role- switching polarities between dominance and submission.

| Original Score: A+ | Jun 11, 2015

On one level, it is an engrossing character study about changing power dynamics in relationships. On another, it's simply a marvel of fluid, focused filmmaking - where everything in the frame is loaded with meaning.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 28, 2015

You can understand why (Petra Von Kant) is viewed by many as one of Fassbinder's masterpieces. Not bad for ten days' work, anyway.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jan 29, 2015

A frigid hothouse in four acts and one epilogue, the equal of the best of Losey or Duras

| Jan 27, 2014

The DVD cover tagline is "sex is the ultimate weapon," but of course, it's only about sex at all insofar as it's about the relationship of sex to everything else.

| Feb 19, 2008