Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant

The German writer and director Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) in 1971. During that period, Fassbinder's work was inspired by

the American melodramas of the 1950's by his compatriot and film director Hans Detlef Sierck, who had emigrated to America just before the war and made a name for himself as Douglas Sirk. In 1972 Fassbinder himself made a film of the play, starring Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann.

Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant is about the politics of power, which is exerted consciously or unconsciously by people in personal relationships. It's a recurrent theme in Fassbinder's work. Power is revealed as a deciding factor in human relationships. Afraid to be alone, his characters yearn for love, which then turns into violence, repression and terror.

In Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant this theme is explored through a lesbian love drama set in the glamorous world of high fashion.

Petra von Kant is the uncrowned queen of German fashion, a designer with influence and prestige, whose fasion empire has made her rich beyond belief. However, although she's succeeded in business, she's failed in her private life. Having only recently divorced her second husband, she lives alone in her luxurious apartment, where she is aided from early morning until late at night by her trusty servant Marlene, who she treats like dirt and constantly seeks to humiliate. The two of them are involved in an unequal power relationship, in which Petra is the master making increasingly absurd demands, and Marlene is the servile and taciturn slave, who always complies. As well as Marlene, the other women in Petra's life – her mother and her daughter – are also trapped in Petra's web of money, power and glamour. 

Things start shifting into gear when her cousin Sidonie introduces Petra to the young and beautiful Karin Thimm, who has just left her husband. Petra falls head over heels in love with the sexy Karin and offers to help her become a model. Karin has no real feelings for Petra, but she can use the leg up and the money, and artfully exploits the situation to the full. The taciturn Marlene is powerless, having to witness how 'her' Petra is taken away from her by Karin. At the same time, her constant presence, as a sort of sinister ghost in the background, casts its shadow over what is to come. For it soon becomes clear that Karin has the upper hand, with Petra now reduced to the role of the one exploited, just as Marlene has been in their relationship. When Karin decides she has had enough of the jealous and possessive conduct of Petra, she goes back to her husband, leaving Petra to confront her own behaviour and seek a new direction in her life.

Director Martin Kušej's staging of Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant for the Residenztheater in Munich premiered in 2012. Kušej, who in 2009 featured at the Holland Festival with his staging of Woyzeck, has set the action in a brightly lit, whiter than white room, enclosed by four glass walls, imprisoning the characters in a sterile environment which seems to shut them off from real life. To the audience, it feels like a peepshow of the soul – watching the characters being forced to reveal themselves under the bright lights –, a feeling which is reinforced by the multiple black-outs which confront the members of the audience with their own reflection, like voyeurs who have to put in another coin if they want to continue to watch. The white stage floor is filled with rows and rows of meticulously, symmetrically placed empty glass bottles, a monoculture of outward appearance, as empty, hollow and brittle as Petra Kant's luxurious lifestyle. It's only a matter of time before this fragile dreamworld she has escaped into will be shattered to pieces.

For his direction of Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant, Kušej won the prestigious Faust Preis in 2012, while leading ladies Bibiana Beglau and Andrea Wenzl also won prizes for their roles. Beglau, dressed in a tight designer dress and dangerously high heels, delivers a magnetic performance as the whimsical Petra von Kant, instantly switching between sadism and tenderness, and between haughty arrogance and vulnerable dependence. Andrea Wenzl plays femme fatal Karin Thimm with an enticing mix of girlish vice and irresistible sex appeal. Playing the taciturn Marlene, Sophie von Kessel, with boyish short hair and with eyes wich are rimmed with kohl and never seem to blink, moves across the stage like an ominous spectre.