rules of the game
by Douglas Messerli
Peter Marthesheimer, Pea Frohlich, and Rainer
Werner Fassbinder (screenplay), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (director) Lola /
1981
The
whorehouse, where a great deal of the film’s events take place, has the feel
almost of prewar Berlin, with sex (heterosexual and homosexual, as well as
mixed groupings) taking place in the main room as well in bedrooms throughout
the house. Perhaps taking a cue from theatrical productions such as Cabaret,
Fassbinder’s director of photography, Xaver Schwarzenberger, has cast much of
the film in garish candy-like colors: reds, yellows, lavenders, greens, and
blues.
It’s no wonder she’s outraged by the possessive jealousy of both her
lovers, Schuckert—whom, as Vincent Canby quipped in his original review, “she
calls a pig and frequently means it”—and the drum-playing government employee
Esslin (Matthias Fuchs). Upon hearing about the new man in town, Housing
Inspector Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl)—a principled fool alike Gogol’s
Government Inspector, who descends upon the small community as a man torn
between high ideals and his humanist good intentions—Lola becomes intrigued.
His job, after all, is to help bring the new German economic miracle to such
outlying communities filled with just such crafty foxes, and she senses,
surely, that this is the time get in on the rewards.
The
audience also cannot help but to root for this brazen enchantress, and is soon
rewarded by the hussy’s attempt to lure the slightly prissy town official by
pretending to study up in the town library on Ming vases, one of which Von Bohm
features in his house.
Lola successfully seduces Von Bohm, in part, by singing a gentle round
with him in a country chapel, dressed in a handsome white dress with small
black dots—a gown that in the year before these events are said to have
happened, 1955, might have been worn by the fashion savvy Lisa of Hitchcock’s Rear
Window.
Just as Von Bohm falls for Lola, going so far to even buy her an
engagement ring, the activist Esslin, disappointed with Von Bohm’s mild
reaction to the city leaders and Schuckert’s evil actions, decides to show his
boss the darker “side” of the community, taking him into the whorehouse at the
very moment that Lola is about to sing. It is his discovery and outrage that
sends her over the edge, performing the Rita Hayworth standard as something
closer to a striptease.
In
revenge, Von Bohm searches all city records in which Schuckert and the mayor
have been involved, uncovering, as we might expect, a long history of
kickbacks, illegal transfers, and other evil doings. When he announces that he
intends to postpone all new building, city leaders secretly meet to determine
their tactics. Helped by the idealist Esslin, Von Bohm builds a case against
them which he attempts to leak—without success—to a local reporter. Even Esslin
realizes that, in the morass of such corruption, Von Bohm cannot win, playing
as he is without any rules.
As
ever, Schuckert, who, more than anyone knows “the rules of the game,”
immediately senses how to solve the dilemma, offering up the services of Lola
to Von Bohm, and, accordingly, abandoning his claims to her.
As
usual, he gets his way: Von Bohm marries Lola, who suddenly links the
well-meaning official with the town’s ruling class (Lola has borne a child with
Schuckert), while offering Lola the opportunity to join their ranks. The film
ends with Lola being welcomed into the arms of Schuckert’s and the mayor’s
nasty wives, after which she rushes off for one last fling with the town’s
biggest economic wunderkind, a man who knows how to control both his
compatriot’s pocketbooks and hearts.
Los Angeles, September 15, 2015
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September
2015).
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