In a Year with 13 Moons

Saw In a Year with 13 Moons, a fairly dismal film by Fassbinder about a transsexual woman trying to find a place to fit in the world. We discover her in a relationship-ending fight with her current boyfriend and follow her life backwards from that point, eventually revealing what drove her to change her sex. We discover that she was abandoned by her parents and left in a bureaucratic limbo by the German government. Unable to be adopted, she got a job in a slaughterhouse, and then as a prostitute, wryly remarking that she traded one job in the meat industry for another.

The film deals heavily with identity and reality (a theme that Fassbinder also explored in World on a Wire.) We see the relationship-ending argument from the start of the film be repeated in an old movie. Were the protagonist and her boyfriend merely repeating what they'd seen on TV? We see a shoot-out which turns out to be a film shoot, the characters talk of "becoming" someone for the sake of their lovers or friends, and of course the protagonist is a woman in a man's body (or is she?) The notion of a deeper reality behind the perception is visited again and again.

The film is fairly glum however. The protagonist just wants a niche to fit into but they are unsuccessful in everything; as a woman, as a man, as this one's lover, as that one's. Strangulation is another repeated concept, as circumstances close in on our protagonist.

There's a sense of nervousness to film, as it keeps worrying over the same ideas, visiting and revisiting them. Juxtaposition is used to give the film a surreal air and Fassbinder's camera is in no rush, preferring to wait and watch as events unfold in eternal longshots. The film is slow and dense, interesting but not exciting. I found it sort of a slog but it's definitely got something on under the surface.