Brigitte Helm gives a fascinating performance in this incisive portrait of bourgeois langueur. A wife, bored with her too-solid husband (Gustav Diessl) and too-safe existence, is drawn to a painter and his Latinesque bohemian milieu. But her fantasies of an alternative self turn against her in the most unrelenting way, as Pabst continues his fascination with female psychology that would culminate in Pandora's Box. Brigitte Helm's "curious, fascinating power has never been exploited with such skill," Paul Rotha said. And Jan-Christopher Horak wrote, for the 1997 Pordenone Festival, "Abwege looks at love on the rocks or marriage as a hollow social convention. Previously neglected by Pabst scholars, because it was not in keeping with Pabst's liberal 'humanist' image, this cool, understated film may be Pabst's most modern. Never before had Pabst so ruthlessly and so analytically presented the exchange value of sex and money."