Inducted alongside the
film’s writer-director (and actor) Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fear Eats The Soul
is a remarkably passionate and humane drama. Fassbinder, with real tenderness,
contemplates racial tensions, ageism and relationship stigmas. In one of the
great cinematic romances, involving sixty-year-old cleaning woman Emmi and Ali,
a Moroccan gastarbeiter (guest worker) in his late thirties, Fassbinder tells a
story addressing this content but also a complex relationship in it’s own
right. There’s such beauty in little moments between the central characters, who,
despite their troubles, are absolutely in love with and dedicated to one
another. Much as Fassbinder himself, with his compassion towards society’s
downtrodden, has to do with this, the central performances are themselves great.
Briggite Mira’s Emmi is portrayed with grace, sympathy and understanding, and
El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinder’s then-lover, draws upon his own life’s tragedy,
besought with violence and excess, giving an excellently understated
performance as Ali. For all the social commentary, the crux at the heart of
Fear Eats The Soul is that love is indeed blind.
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