"Chinesisches Rouelette" or "Chinese Roulette" is a West German color film from 1976, so this one has its 40th anniversary this year. The writer and director is Rainer Werner Fassbinder and he was 30 when he shot this movie less than 100 years before his untimely death. It is a bit of an unusual film for him as the character in here is a girl (on crutches) and usually his protagonists were female grown-up women. Of course, there are also grown-ups in here. Also the movie stays easily under 90 minutes, which is also not too common for Fassbinder films. Carstensen, Mira, Lommel and Spengler are all actors that worked with Fassbinder on a regular basis and they have a couple good scene s in here too. I also somewhat liked the premise of everybody playing Chinese Roulette here, but sadly it really takes quite a while until they finally do and everything before that simply is not very interesting. I struggled a bit with the characters in general. Of course, it's rarely the case that there are likable characters in Fassbinder films, but I also cared for hardly anybody in here, maybe only the girl. As a whole, I must say I was glad this film was over fairly quickly as I felt the negative outweighed the positive. It's not one of Fassbinder's best or worst, but I would not really recommend the watch. Thumbs down.
Review of Chinese Roulette
