I Only Want You to Love Me

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's I Only Want You to Love Me, originally made for German television during the late 1970s, was slow in achieving international renown, but it easily stands alongside the filmmaker's best work. Vitus Zeplichal stars as Peter, an anguished young man whose contentious relationship with his officious, condescending father (Alexander Allerson) and his cold, perpetually angry mother (Erni Mangold) has a profound impact on his adult life. Peter is desperate to be loved, and when he marries Erika (Elke Aberle), his need to impress her (and his parents) leads to disaster. His construction job in Munich doesn't pay much, but he's determined to give Erika everything she desires, leading to overwork, crippling debt, and despair. The story jumps back and forth chronologically from Peter's childhood to his marriage to his later imprisonment. Zeplichal's performance is off-puttingly twitchy, and it seems possible that the actor's uncertainty contributes to the sense of Peter's inability to exist peacefully in the world. Fassbinder often shoots his characters from a distance, and with some external frame (such as the windows of a passing train) around them, and the exquisitely composed shots, with Michael Ballhaus's smoothly gliding camera, contribute to the mood of alienation. Much has been made of the movie's Freudian psychological underpinnings, but what keeps the film relevant is Fassbinder's blunt, angry assessment of capitalism and its discontents.