Lola

A wonderfully upfront narrative rendered in garish primary colours, this discursive update of The Blue Angel poses Lola (Sukowa) and the blue-eyed trembling-pillar-of-rectitude building commissioner who helplessly falls for her (Mueller- Stahl) as barometers of the moral bankruptcy at the heart of Germany's post-war 'economic miracle'. Lola (owned, like most of the city, by Mario Adorf's bluffly sleazy building profiteer) threads sinuously through the civic corruption of reconstruction, accruing sufficient manipulative credit to buy a slice of the status quo, seductively scuttling several shades of idealism with the oldest of come-on currencies. Business as usual. The prostitution metaphors come undiluted from early Godard, the poster-art visuals from the magnificent melodramas of Sirk and Minnelli; the provocations are all Fassbinder's own.