“Divorced with a child, Christa needs money to continue her children's day-care center. She and Werner rob a bank. Her old friend Ingrid takes the money to the center, where it is rejected. Lena, the bank employee who was Christa's hostage, has already been there on her trail. Christa and Ingrid flee to Portugal and work on a farm cooperative until they are thrown out for being lovers. Back in Germany, the police corner Christa, and Lena fails to identify her as the robber....
“After working for 10 years in films as a major German actress and in collaborative projects with her husband, Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta describes her first independent feature as as study about three women at different stages along the path of self-awareness, with Christa having evolved furthest (she delivers the first line of the film: ‘I had to create my own jail before I realized what had happened to me'). ‘Christa Klages is about friendship and bonds of identification between women.... it's the film that the touted Girlfriends and One Sings, the Other Doesn't claimed to be but never got around to' (Chicago Reader)." --Richard Kwietniowski