Tango. Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Writer Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Camera Juergen Juerges Editor Thea Eymesz Art Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Brigitte Mira
El Hedi Ben Salem
Barbara Valentin
Irm Hermann
Peter Gauhe
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Racism is the theme but done in a low-profile way that creates an interior end reaction rather than easy outrage at outright racists.
A sixtyish widow one day wanders into a bar catering to Arab workers. She meets a thirtyish, handsome, bearded Arab worker who asks her to dance. They sympathise and somehow their mutual lonelinesses makes them friends. He takes her home and stays. It is not sex, but respect and finally love, that binds this strange couple together.
Her grown children are outraged; people she works with as a cleaning woman also shun her, as do tradespeople. They go off on a vacation and suddenly people seem transformed on their return. But it is only because they need her.
Film is played with reserve. Technically flawless, deceptively simple and avoiding excesses, it is about problems that are timely and timeless in implications.
(Color) Extract of a review from 1974. Running time: 94 MIN.
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