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Sunday, Jul 13, 1997
Rio das Mortes
A chance to see Fassbinder in a comic mode. Two friends, Michel, a tile layer, and Gü;nther, a black "child of the U.S. Occupation," himself just out of the navy, revive a childhood dream of emigrating to Peru and there searching for a hidden treasure they believe is buried on the Rio das Mortes. Michel's fiancée Hanna (Schygulla), a mama's girl despite her black lace underwear, opposes this childish venture-and threatens to shoot them both if they embark on it. In a "normal" Fassbinder film this is exactly what she would do; but in this film's fairy-tale mode, something else occurs. Not that property means less to this Hanna than her later incarnations (her "property" is propriety itself); nor that, for these children of the middle class, love isn't a learned emotion-egotistical, rote. But as Wilhelm Roth notes in the book Fassbinder, "The characters in this film are not trapped in a system like those in the gangster films or in Herr R.: the film (itself) is more open, not determined by a single mood." Repeated Friday, July 18.
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