A common and probably unfair criticism of Fassbinder is that his film-making displayed a darkly misogynistic streak. Truthfully, rather than a misogynist, Fassbinder believed that both sexes were worthy of a good kicking -- he had no political reservations preventing him from showing women at their ugliest and most manipulative. Fassbinder, a man who had sex with both men and women and had complicated and unconventional relationships with members of both sexes, most likely viewed the distinction between men and women as a thin and hazy line; he based 'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant', a lesbian melodrama with absolutely no male actors in the entire film, on his own experiences with men, after all.
Fassbinder wanted to expose the ugly truth wherever it may lie: in response to a question he was once asked by Karlheinz Böhm as to where his political allegiance lay, he stated, 'No matter if it's on the right, left, top or bottom, I shoot in every direction.' Furthermore, some of Fassbinder's films display men at their ugliest and women at their most sympathetic, such as 'Martha', which features Margit Carstensen's character psychologically and emotionally tortured and gaslighted by her monster of a husband (the aforementioned Böhm) to such a degree that she ends the film both emotionally and literally crippled.
'Lola', however, is almost certainly one of the films that will attract the 'misogyny' label from many. The film's protagonist is, simply, a whore. She is unsympathetic, vain and manipulative. Everyone in the film knows that she is a whore (even her own embarrassed mother), with the sole exception of Armin Mueller-Stahl's character, a naive and ageing 'moralist', who falls in love with a mirage, a contrived, fictional version of her.
When Lola finally realises that the wealthy and respectable Von Bohm has fallen in love with her, her reaction is not one of joy or relief, or one of belief that she could potentially escape the ugly world she is trapped in -- instead she coldly realises she has another man with capital to exploit to the emotional bitter end, except this one comes with a ring.
'Do you want to live in a world without morality? A world that's only bad and rotten and corrupt?' Lola is asked. 'I would love to. My only problem is that they do not allow me to take part' is her darkly serious reply. You get the feeling that Lola chose the gutter, that the gutter didn't necessarily choose her; this is in contrast to many films about the 'liberation' of prostitutes.
The film is set in the strange era of immediate post-war Germany, a period in which an entire country awoke from mass hypnosis, literally bombed back into reality; a nation that had to rebuild itself, rediscover its dignity and learn to come to terms with its morass of guilt.
The use of colour filters in Fassbinder's late films is distinctive and powerful, creating a queasy and sleazy mood of the garish underworld; along with 'Querelle', 'Lola' is a great example of this. It's as if Fassbinder took the melodrama of his beloved Douglas Sirk and placed it right in the hungry stomach of Hell.
'Lola' is a strong film: unconventional, creative and fascinating, but it doesn't quite reach the level of brilliance of the other two entries in his 'BRD Trilogy' -- the outstanding 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' from 1979, and the tragic and near-perfect 'Veronika Voss' from the year of his death, 1982.
