Ariane (Margit Carstensen) and her husband Gerhard (Alexander Allerson) belong to Munich's high society. They both went away for the weekend - she to Milan and he to Oslo - while their walking-impaired daughter Angela (Andrea Schober) stayed at home under the supervision of her mute teacher Traunitz (Macha Méril). In reality, however, they are both meeting their secret lovers, Gerhard with Irene (Anna Karina) and Ariane with Kolbe (Ulli Lommel), one of her husband's employees. When Gerhard drives with Irene to the family castle, where the housekeeper Kast (Brigitte Mira) is already waiting with her son Gabriel (Volker Spengler), the two couples have an unpleasant encounter. However, there is no scandal because now that all the cards are on the table, they decide to spend the weekend together.

The arrival of Angela and Traunitz, however, disrupts the peace considerably. It quickly becomes clear that the meeting at the castle was arranged by the girl and planned well in advance. She has long known about her parents' affairs and the weekend is not only intended to confront her with her husband's infidelity, but also to give Angela the opportunity to take revenge on her parents.

“For I is something else…”

When his feature film Whity turned out to be a commercial failure, director and screenwriter Rainer Werner Fassbinder made a second attempt at an international project with Chinese Roulette. Together with cameraman Michael Ballhaus, he discussed the project, which was planned, shot and edited within just a few weeks, which was emblematic of the enormous speed at which Fassbinder tackled his numerous artistic endeavors. However, the speed with which Chinese Roulette was made should not lead the viewer to judge that it is a quickly produced and not carefully staged work. The relationship drama, staged in a very experimental way, is a continuation of the themes that accompany Fassbinder's entire work, especially the wounds of a post-war society that always wants to move on and in doing so falls into old, fatal behavioral patterns.

Central to the film is a quote from the letters of the French author Arthur Rimbaud, which is about a process of creeping self-alienation. This type of self-reflection that the writer portrays in his letters is still far removed from the characters who appear in Fassbinder's film, because they all indulge in a certain form of self-deception, which they confidently convey to the outside world. Even marital infidelity is ignored and treated like an amusing anecdote at a party, which is met with a mixture of shame and strangeness in the respective affairs. Fassbinder stages a form of hell, but one that does not involve flames or fire and is much closer to the version in Jean-Paul Sarte's Closed Society. The game of Chinese Roulette is a variation of the dialogue in the play, a series of perspectives on a person who quickly notices that the image that has carefully served as protection for years is in danger of falling. Fassbinder sets out the plot for this dramaturgically very exciting finale, whereby you can see the adults' production beforehand and at the same time the anger at the lie of always carrying on.

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Way out of self-deception

Significantly, the anger comes from the younger generation. The difficulty walking and the silence can be seen as symptoms of a generation condemned to incapacity. It is a reference to the aggression and pent-up frustration of young people, which was felt politically and socially throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Margit Carstensen and Alexander Allerson play characters who are comfortable with self-deception and who are hardly surprised by their spouse's infidelity. The pose has become a lifestyle, further fueled by games, sex and alcohol, placed in a glass cabinet in the middle of the room. Andrea Schober plays the angry one, who doesn't, as one might expect, only have destruction in mind, but rather wants to realize a vague vision of reconstruction. Tearing down order and deception can open up a possibility for truth, a real new beginning, so that Chinese Roulette ends up being Fassbinder's most hopeful film.