About

Writing of Douglas Sirk's films, Fassbinder said that "insanity represents a form of hope." This seems applicable to his work as well, no more so than in Fear of Fear, a clinical study of a middle-class housewife who becomes haunted by her own anxiety. Going through the motions of daily domesticity, Margot (Margit Carstensen) senses her identity slipping away in her impassive marriage. Unable to name the source of her creeping despair, she searches for respite in Leonard Cohen records, cognac and eventually fistfuls of Valium. As the walls of Margot's oppressive environment begin closing in on her, muted panic blooms into crippling hysteria. Fassbinder depicts Margot's mental collapse visually through wavering hallucinations, jolts of colour, unsettling dolly zooms (borrowed from Hitchcock's Vertigo), and tight close-ups of Carstensen's face that truly convey her derangement. "I wanted to take my mind off the fear," is Margot's only explanation for her own disintegration.

M | Mature themes