page 16

Film Festival Review

The Left-Handed Woman

(Film Festival)

Directed by Peter Handke.

The male-master, female-servant schema, especially when manifested in its 'legalised' form - marriage - has been a focal point of Western society (we wouldn't have heard so much about it otherwise), consequently it has not had the fortune to have been spared the ink, or the film in the all-to-often one-sided interpretations we are constantly fed concerning the chauvism and binds encountered with the installation of holy matrimony.

Hot on the high heels of "An Unmarried Woman," the Left Handed Woman is a pretty good attempt at re-creating the black, maniac-depressive world of a woman struggling to free herself from this, the formidiable and repressive bond which appears to stretch upwards but seldom otherwise. In the case of our heroine, she must, at all costs, detract herself from the stereotype role into which she has had the misfortune to let marriage cast her, - of mother and wife which, too long ago were poured like cement over a promising, career in French translation.

At the cost of her sanity, she finds, gradualy at first but then with widening realisation that she has been completely 'deprogrammed' and reprogrammed, that any ability she may've had has been blurred beyond recognition by this far stronger role imposed upon her.

Director Peter Handke goes immediately to great lengths to inform us of just where exactly his sympathies lie - even his conclusions have as yet to take shape - and one is cast without unnecessary formalities into a dark, semi-silent world where our 'patient', played fittingly by Edith Clever a- waits yet another arrival of her businessman-first-husband-second master who it would seem spends more time in foreign parts than at home with Mum and the kid

The depressing feeling of monotonous, laboured routine is uneasily real, the waiting in the sparsely furnished, dimly-lit house, departing to pick him up at the airport, and holding the suitcases while he locks her in an unreciprocated embrace, — all are carried out in silence, — the woman, (significantly, she isn't given a name) doesn't in tact speak until the movie is some 12 to 15 minutes old. And then, a scene of sardonic humour. The couple check into a hotel for the night, as if Bruno, the husband played by Bruno Ganz after having ('bought'?) treated his wife to a dinner and a bottle of wine is now expecting his generosity to be returned just as he might from the trail of one night stands he has left behind him throughout Europe.

But while it is clear that Handke is in deepest sympathy with the woman and her predicament, from the point where she informs Bruno that she wants him to leave her (one of several incongrutuous twists) it is also clear that he is concerned not only for her welfare but also for others most notably that of the son, Stefan; and more generally, that the entire exercise is futile in the first place.

In the first case the effects of the situation, on the mother/son relationship are witnessed with growing concern. Initially the vital support she needs, the bond degenerates parallel to her mental health until the point is reached where she cannot help her hands closing around his throat, after which strangely enough we witness also a deterioration in his mental health.

With the exit or Bruno the movie takes a turn for the worse, and becomes little more than a psychological case-study as we follow the woman's progress over the course of three tortorous months in solitude and walking round in increasingly decreasing circles. One's immediate question is: why doesn't she latch onto someone else? Here is a fine opportunity for Handke to ease in further conflict, — a 'give her an inch and she'll take a male' situation, or even to stoop to an open door, free trade policy, but to do so would be to keep away the raisons d'efre, by merely replacing the last master with another.

The essential point for all his sympathy, that Handke makes is that while a master can certainly live alone, what is a servant without a master? A master, being just that, has the gift of independency but a servant requires something to identify with. The woman therefore must live alone, she must suffer the mental and sexual depravations, without being priced to join the Valium Society, or resorting to the bottle to cope with her [unclear: incapacity] to cope.

Ultimately, she loses. The rut is so de-en she cannot climb out of it, the crisis is resolved not when she is able to break free, but when she is able to come to terms with her reform. Symbolically, she goes and buys her husband a new [unclear: pa] of shoes, which he, the master and appreciative of the situation, promptly [unclear: muddie] in a puddle. There can be no resolution, accept acceptance.

R. Saker.