Melodrama abounded in the tumultuous life and early death of West German director and transgressive LGBTQ personality Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1946-1982), and director Oskar Roehler's visual gambit (like the Lars Von Trier approach in Dogville and Manderlay) is rendering a biopic in flagrantly fake, expressionistic form. Witness hand-drawn backgrounds, oppressively artificial interior sets, and stiffly posed and mannered actors. The result is very much a movie critic's movie, good for the enduring Fassbinder cult; others watch at your own risk (or supplement with reading the lurid literature extant on Fassbinder).
Rainer (a laudable impersonation by Oliver Masucci) first appears in 1967, fully formed in his gay-leather-bar sartorial ensemble (eventually replaced by campy leopard-print jackets and pants), unkempt facial hair, and protruding belly. Exiled from drama school, the unctuous actor-writer-director bullies his way into the Berlin theater/filmmaking scene, afflicting the comfortable and, well, afflicting the afflicted as well, with a dictatorial style and insistence he will be as famous as Orson Welles and Douglas Sirk. Declaring himself bisexual but "mostly gay," he exploits misfits and lovers into an oddly loyal stable of collaborators, actors, investors, and hangers-on (some real-life individuals, like Hanna Schygulla, appear in disguised form; others, like the late Ulli Lommel and Brigitte Mira, are named).
With an amazing output of up to seven feature films per year, Fassbinder indeed wins international acclaim at Cannes. He also spirals into cocaine use, and a number of associates die off young before the life of whirlwind indulgence takes Fassbinder as well. One easily draws a parallel with Andy Warhol and his commune-like "Factory" of decadent NYC "superstar" drag queens, models, performers, and cinephiles; in fact, Fassbinder's meeting Warhol (played by Alexander Scheer) is a foregone conclusion.
Unlike Johnny Depp in Ed Wood, Masucci does little to soften and make the protagonist palatable to lumpenproletariat viewers. Though capable of kindness and warmth, this screen Fassbinder's credo seems embodied in an utterance after some especially bad behavior: "Somebody has to be the asshole!" He shows the most vulnerability in emotionally needy, homosexual affairs, typically with husky, nonwhite (hence not-entirely-available) men. Still, the attractions do not prevent the left-wing Fassbinder from hurling the occasional racist shocker at the assorted boyfriends.
It is both to the film's credit and its detriment that it resists being a mere promo to tempt viewers into watching Germany in Autumn, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss, or other titles in the RWF canon. Mainly it inspires curiosity to confirm that, yes, these people really existed, and, apparently, they tolerated Rainer doing lots of awful things. Sex content, drug use, and male nudity make Enfant Terrible a problematic item for all but adventurous collections. Maybe Rainer would have wanted it that way, who knows? (Aud: P)