Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Btexxamar I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

lasttimeisaw A R.W. Fassbinder double-feature binge (Chinese ROULETTE 1976 and QUERELLE 1982, his swan song) coincides with a starting point for me to access his oeuvre, as one of the pioneer of modern German cinema, Fassbinder has a burning-too-fast career orbit, as if he was exerting all his energy in cranking out films before his dooming self-indulgent suicide at the age of 37 (with more than 40 works done in 15 years). Yet two films must have its restricted view, but Fassbinder films' mindset nevertheless more or less could be conjectured from them, and his stylish flourish is also mesmerizingly toxic. Both films could adopt themselves comfortably into a theatrical play not the least courtesy of their (mostly or exclusively) in-door locales, for Chinese ROULETTE, it has a secular tone, 90% of the film takes place inside a rural mansion, with familial secrets, connubial deceptions, mother-daughter hatred, the divide of social strata, vindictive self-destruction viciously unfold and infuse a deleterious corruption even to the onlookers, all is triggered by the innocuous eponymous game. While QUERELLE is projected on more ritualized dark amber light sepia background setting stimulating a claustrophobic oppression of lust and desire within a handful locations (the faux-deck of a ship ashore, the phallus worship Hotel Feria Bar, an underground tunnel for hideaway), a male-dominant sexual obsession mingled with blatant homosexual thrust to an astounding incestuous extremity, brilliantly done via an intuitive candor. Mirror is a recurrent item in both films, exposes the other-half which reflects the true id inside one's soul, in Chinese ROULETTE the stunning flux of the stationary tableaux interlacing two or three out of the eight characters orchestrates a scintillating picture of a guilt-and-punishment visual symphony with swishy panache; in QUERELLE, mirrors reduce their occurrence but the conscientiously measured compositions transpire an even more ostentatious narcissism with a sultry plume of hormone-excreting rugged contours of male bodies. QUERELLE is adapted from Jean Genet's novel "QUERELLE DE BREST", whose literature text also introduced through the soothing voice-over of an unknown narrator, the film does stage a sensible amount of poetic license to filter a vicarious compassion through a singular mortal's inscrutable behavioral symptoms; in Chinese ROULETTE, a prose (or poem) soliloquy of androgyny also contrives to reach the same effect (but sounds a trifle recondite when contextualizing it under the film's incumbent situation). Anyhow Fassbinder is a trailblazer in defying the mainstream's prejudices, and very capable of visualize and dissect the tumor of humanity. The cast, there are 8 characters in Chinese ROULETTE, with almost equal weight in the screen time, but it is the youngest one, Andrea Schober (under Fassbinder's guidance for sure), the crippled girl seeks for revenge to her parents' betrayal and negligence, teaches all of us a lesson (how selfish we are to find a scapegoat for every bit of repercussions happen to us) with such acute insight, fearless audacity and extreme measures. While big name (Anna Karina) and other Fassbinder's regulars (Margit Carstensen, Brigitte Mira, Ulli Lommel) all end up licking their own wounds in the corner. In QUERELLE, Brad Davis (a real-life AIDS fighter then) is valiant, his masculinity and sinewy physique defies all the stereotyped treatment of gay men in the media, injecting a raw and visceral complexity into Querelle's spontaneous promiscuity and sporadic anger. Hanno Pöschl may fall short to guarantee the vigorous duality required for his two roles, but the gut- bashing combats (or playing) between two brothers fabricate the most erotic intimacy has ever been presented on the screen. Two veterans, Franco Nero is either recording his secret affection in the cabinet or wandering near Querelle from oblique angles; the fading beauty Jeanne Moreau, hums "Each man kills the things he loves", and is lost in her own fantasy of the banquet she can savor. Personally I incline towards QUERELLE's unconventional approach to kill off the ambiguities of sexual orientation and examine the most primal desire made with blood and flesh, but Chinese ROULETTE achieves another form of success, it maintains a serene aplomb above all the vile assault and bitter turbulence, like the unspecified pistol shot at the coda, no matter who bites the dust, a bullet is never an ultimate solution to all the problems.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx Chinese Roulette is about a marriage. An upper class couple split up for the weekend, each has told lies to the other regarding their destination, however both end up at the same destination with lovers in tow, the schloss in the countryside. This has been carefully machinated by their young disabled daughter who has known of the affairs of her parents for many years.The scene where Herr Christ and lover walk in on Madame Christ and lover is pretty good, there's initial shock, then they manage to dissociate from their roles and have a good chuckle about it together. Thus begins the weekend.The daughter arrives and insists on a game of Chinese Roulette, this is an interesting little game. You get two teams of four people, the first team picks a person from the other in a secret conclave. The second team then has to guess who is the person in their team who has been chosen by asking nine questions, of the form, "if this person was a magazine, which magazine would they be?". Anyway the game gets pretty cruel if you want to play it that way, "Which would be the most fitting method of execution for the person in question" for example. You could find titillation in the game by praising someone without them knowing who you are referring to or dark joy in deeply insulting them.The daughter has arranged it all to grind the adults down. I suppose if there is one message of the film it's that if you breed adders you shouldn't be surprised if they grow up and eat you. The couple have clearly not provided for their daughter (other than materially speaking - she has whatever she wants, chocolates dolls, pretty dresses &c).The game is an exercise in cruelty, a couple of the answers being pretty good. However there is a lot of insecurity, everyone is wondering if the person who is being described as an apple with a worm inside it is them, furthermore the person answering the question is often blatantly prejudiced and is not understanding the person they are speaking about.There are some pretty bizarre things going on, the butler-type Gabriel writes unsound doggerel and reads it aloud to the couples (previously only one couple at a time). There are references to a character we never see, strange complicities, unexplained relationships.One thing you can say though is that the movie is shot brilliantly, there are some wonderful circular shots (trademark of Scorsese and Fassbinder regular collaborator Michael Ballhaus) where the camera orbits the characters, lots of shots of people reflected off glass or cut in two by doorways, some exquisite framing. Perhaps the most exquisite movie I've seen in visual terms. The score too is of a very high calibre.I take it as a pretty mystical film, one scene that is great is the daughter sat in her bed talking to Gabriel, the camera is at floor level just behind a row of the dolls which she has arranged as a kind of adoring audience for her. You feel like one of the dolls really, it's quite strange. Certainly Fassbinder is railing against certain bourgeois modes here. The characters are isolated by their feelings of self-worth, their deceptions, their victim status, and their sharp tongues, there's no love anywhere. In every relationship in the movie I felt as if it were one possessing the other, as if a trinket.It's nastiness all around, almost an exercise in misanthropy, another reviewer referred to it as an exercise in deception as a survival tactic. I recently titled a review of mine, "A manual on how to live", well this really is "A manual on how not to live". It's as disparaging to victims as to victimisers. One of Fassbinder's other movies was called Satan's Brew and I really think this one could have been as well .

Prof_Lostiswitz A family of rich industrialists has one child - a teenage daughter crippled by some disease she caught 11 years before (probably Muscular Dystrophy). She has every luxury imaginable, and her parents are superficially polite to her - but underneath, they despise her. Her mother, especially, hates her enough to kill her; yet she maintains the appearances of a caring parent.Both parents have adulterous affairs going - ever since the daughter Angela became crippled by her illness, as the girl sweetly informs us. They both go off to their country chateau at different times on various pretexts, and turn a blind eye to what the other spouse is probably doing. Angela is left in a glittering emotional desert, a gilded cage; her only source of companionship is her mute governess/nanny, a pleasant young lady with a mischievous smile.Angela has grown to be as elegant and cruel as the people around her, although we can sympathies because we see that there was no way she could learn better behaviour - I like to compare her to Catherine Sloper at the end of The Heiress (1949). She arranges matters so that both her parents book the chateau for the same weekend; so one adulterous couple surprises the other "in flagrante delicto". Being civilised people, they laugh it off and sit down to dinner, determined to enjoy the weekend as a party - but then Angela and the governess turn up. Angela is the most perfect portrayal of a "yuppie b*tch", but we can still feel for her. (At one point she asks the caretaker's son, "Would you be able to love a cripple", and his silence tells us all we need to know.After she has installed herself at the chateau, she drags herself around the hallways opening various bedroom doors and peering maliciously at the adulterous couples inside; they stare back in unhappy resentment. Later the couples propose to relieve their boredom by some game, so the mother comes up with a bright idea: target shooting! She forthwith aims a pistol out at the courtyard where her daughter is hobbling along; it takes the "other woman" to gently restrain her by holding her hand.Later, at supper, Angela proposes that they should play her favourite game, "Chinese Roulette", in which one group tries to guess the identity of some individual selected by the other group, by means of indirect questions. The questions become increasingly ruthless and cutting; it becomes apparent that this game is as fiendish as Chinese torture and as deadly as Russian roulette, though it uses words instead of bullets. I don't believe in spoilers, so I won't tell you how it ends.The photography in this movie is absolutely stunning; many of the scenes are shot through (or reflected in) glass, suggesting the glittering falsehood and superficiality of these people's lives. The colour composition is exquisite, words cannot really describe it. The slow movements of the characters are choreographed almost like ballet. The spooky music is just used at intervals making this feel like a horror movie (which it really is). Fans of "evil child" movies should check out this one, which raises everything to the max.The director, R. W. Fassbinder, said that he wanted to portray what happens when parents fail to love their children. RWF has a reputation for making art movies with obscure meanings, but this isn't one of them - it's a very rewarding experience, I urge everyone to see it. Everyone is entitled to make the odd clunker, and the guy hit the mark more often than not.

celsokl Sometimes directors guarantee a place in Cinematography Hall of Fame and all of a sudden every work from them become masterpieces. "Chinesisches roulette" is a nice example of an overrated movie. The messed up family and the psychological battles are nice, but no espectacular work for sure. The actors sometimes seem to be intentionally exaggerating, sounding and looking completely artificial. Save a coin for the little girl. Das ist alles.