Name: Too Much: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Start: 2025-11-24T20:45:00+00:00
Location: Queen's Film Theatre, Belfast

Too Much: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is a fever dream of desire, built on the sharp lines of emotional cruelty and the lush textures of a single, decadent room.
A successful fashion designer, Petra (Margit Carstensen), spirals into heartache when she falls hard for the enigmatic Karin (Hanna Schygulla), a young aspiring model. Their entanglement unfolds like a warped runway show—full of longing, power plays, and razor-sharp dialogue.
In the early 1970s, Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life) and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional register.
A queer cinema classic draped in fur, chiffon, and despair, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant remains a devastating portrait of love as performance, featuring exquisitely claustrophobic cinematography by Michael Ballhaus and full-throttle performances by an all-female cast.
Too Much: Melodrama on film is a UK-wide season, supported by BFI National Lottery funding, celebrating the vivid visual language, heightened dramatics and emotional pathos at the heart of film melodrama.