Chinese Roulette

Liz4.0

Never trust a preteen who loves Kraftwerk

Darren Carver-Balsiger4.5

Chinese Roulette is a cruel movie. It is firmly stuck in Fassbinder's harsh, icy world and is a film of cold intellectualism. Set in a house of dishonesty, Chinese Roulette functions as a beautiful chamber piece. Yet it slowly reveals social anarchy and the everyday fascism of family life. It's just one long buildup of simmering tension (sexual, dramatic, or otherwise), and we watch, waiting for and needing the evil to finally reveal the truth.Rainer Werner Fassbinder started off his career with experimental, Nouvelle Vague inspired films. Later he moved onto society-piercing melodramas, and Chinese Roulette comes from his transition from those melodramas into his phase of idiosyncratic international co-productions. As a result, Chinese Roulette is less naturalistic than Fassbinder's earlier movies and also more flashy. Unlike Fassbinder's early works, the camera is not static. It constantly moves around objects and people, changing the perspectives between them. We have shots through glass and transparent objects, and people are blocked by transparency or by reflections. This is a film where everyone can see each other, but there's so much they keep to themselves. Chinese Roulette is Fassbinder at his most effortless, not being a try-hard experimentalist and not being limited by his naturalistic approach.Chinese Roulette features one of the most dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships in cinema. Never have a mother and child so hated each other. There's a lot of silent moments in Chinese Roulette that reveal such discontent. In particular, this is a film of creepy smiles that shows the evil in everyone. The fear of the evil child is amplified by her unnerving grins. Yet who's to blame for the child's behaviour? Is it the unloving parenting, with abuse masked as an embrace? Is it a horrible societal reaction to disability? Or is it the fault of the mute guardian, a metaphorical eunuch able to manipulate and sow discord? Whatever the case, Chinese Roulette contains perhaps the most evil thing a daughter could possibly say about her mother, and it's a heartless, nasty line (but goddamn it's effective).Like all Fassbinder movies, there's no purely good characters in Chinese Roulette. The main plot involves a married couple who are both having affairs. It seems the institution of marriage is meaningless and easily broken. Yet when the four characters are forced to interact, we see how the married couple are intimate and friendly with everyone. Sex is on all of their minds and dominates the screen, even if it is often repressed in the presence of other characters. All of the characters, aside from the youngest and the eldest, get intimate in Chinese Roulette. Yet everyone is awkward and there's many third-wheels in this world of overlapping couples, leaving them all in a kind of social purgatory. Fassbinder loved to do things like this in his movies, poking holes in our morals and questioning what is socially acceptable. His power to extend the cracks in our society is never better than it is in films like Chinese Roulette.There's an emphasis on truth and repressed truths in Chinese Roulette. The characters lie by omission, or tell the truth to harm others. Often characters have to piece together the truths and the lies from the scraps of information that can be gleaned from others. One scene shows us a blind man who lies, someone who can see everything but pretends not to - this is the same essential state the other characters are in. When we get to the titular game, we see how telling the truth can be used to manipulate others. You can take your subjective truth and say it to upset another. The whole final act is taken up by this intense, ritualistic game. Finally everyone reveals what they think of each other. Characters have been staring at each other with hate in their eyes in all the prior scenes, but it's only in the pretext of a game that people are willing the evil to be revealed. On a rewatch, already knowing the game only makes it more enigmatic and sometimes more disturbing. But still when we get to the end, the final shot adds another mystery to proceedings.Chinese Roulette is a stylish and dark film that rewards contemplation. It's an uncaring experience that shows the nastiness inherent in some people. It's twisted and messed up, and quite upsetting, but it's also a very watchable and intriguing film. I've seen almost half of Fassbinder's filmography, and Chinese Roulette still remains my favourite film from the iconoclastic auteur.Rainer Werner Fassbinder RankedMy Top Films of the 1970s

Lara Pop4.5

#Fassbindera shot rings out in the house of lovelessnesshollowlike the souls wandering its corridors its corridors that areloveless and coldthey seethe corridors see the hollow rotcaressing the bodies saying there is only onegodit rots in me (dead) and says im alive im alive i am (dead)a shot rings out in the house of lovelessnessa shot rings out like a gamelike a game that seeslike a game seeing thinkingwho is alive who is alive who is still alivethe house is aliveits doors are like a cruelgamethey open and close and reveal thenothingnessresiding inside like a corpse rottingwith one namea corpse rotting with one namea corpse rotting with one name which isa corpse rotting saying i am(dead dead dead)goda shot rings out in the house of godas if it were a gameas if it were God's Gameresoundinghollowhollowhollow