Uncomfortably close, character driven study of desire, class, power, and German society. The dialogue is dense, insightfully written, at turns funny and cruel, and consistently entertaining. It strings an unreliable, unsound path, sometimes gossipy, sometimes deadly-serious, through a series of charged, otherwise silent tableaux vivantes.
There are moments where what a character is saying or doing crystallizes in a razor-sharp way with what or who the camera is focusing on. These sudden disharmonies or like, perfect small catastrophes of etiquette…
