Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Walter Sedlmayr, Doris Mattes, Marquand Bohm, Lilo Pempeit.

After being teased into asking her to dance in a bar, dark-skinned Moroccan migrant worker Salem approaches a shy, self-effacing, and much older woman (Mira), where conversation and kinship arise despite their extreme age and cultural differences. Likely Fassbinder’s most accessible film (and one of his best) because of its universally-potent themes of racial prejudice/discrimination and unconventional love. It’s not a simple “unlikely love story,” however, as the dynamic of the relationship evolves over the course of the film, often influenced by side-handed comments, embarrassments and peer pressure. Superior to the Douglas Sirk melodramas that inspired it, refreshingly uncertain and populated by lead characters as unpredictable and self-destructive as their creator, although not without aesthetic blandness and some instances of careless technique. Fassbinder appears as the woman’s domineering son-in-law.

82/100