Made almost four decades ago, Liliana Cavani's The Berlin Affair boldly examined sexual fluidity, vulnerability, and power even as it investigated the complications of racial and ethnic identity. Screenwriter and director Cavani is, of course, best known for The Night Porter, a motion picture that helped launch the "Nazi-sploitation" film sub-genre. Since The Night Porter depicted a concentration camp prisoner bonding with her captor, this woman director was accused of promulgating sexist myths about women enjoying victimization. It is this reviewer's opinion that The Night Porter proved that Cavani does not shy away from the most disturbing and troubling aspects of human experience.
The source material for The Berlin Affair is Quicksand, a Japanese novel by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. The novel tells of a passionate love affair between a woman, a married man, and a bachelor who has erectile dysfunction. Cavani took great liberties with the source material and transplanted it to pre-war Nazi Germany.
Our story begins in a cluttered office with a middle-aged man behind a desk. The subdued colors of the office set a calm mood. The man types out a quote from Schopenhauer: "It is not, as the philosophy of professors would foolishly claim, in universal history that we find plan and unity, but rather in the life of the individual."
In walks our heroine, Louise von Hollendorf (Gudrun Landgrebe). Most of the story is told in flashback. She relates it to this man (William Berger) who was once her literature professor but whose works were banned as "pornographic" by the Nazis.
We learn that Louise was happily married to Heinz von Hollendorf (Kevin McNally), a high-ranking Nazi official. Having no children and being affluent enough to afford servants, she spent much of her time taking classes. In a drawing class she first encounters Mitsuko Matsugae (Mio Takaki), the daughter of Japan's ambassador to Germany. Drawing instructor Joseph Benno (Andrea Prodan) notes that the Institute for Germanic Arts has provided a pretty blonde model of "Aryan beauty," yet Louise draws pictures of Mitsuko.
Rumors soon float around that the happily married Mrs. Von Hollendorf and the Japanese ambassador's daughter are having a lesbian affair! Louise uncomfortably discusses it with her husband. She cites a rumor that went around concerning two women within their circle and says, "I never believed a word of it."
One day, after class, Louise and Mitsuko meet. There is a kind of tension. As befits a Japanese young woman of the era, Mitsuko appears modest, restrained, and submissive. The two of them have lunch and Mitsuko timidly inquires, "Are you and your husband in love?" Louise assures her they are. The two women become friends. On a visit, Mitsuko shows Louise how to wear a kimono. Mitsuko puts her hands on Louise's waist, they play with a cloth kimono belt, and then they find themselves kissing. "One minute we were laughing and the next we were making love," she explains to the professor.
Later, Heinz inquires about the friendship between his wife and the Japanese woman. "I like her," Louise says. "In what way?" Heinz presses. "No special way," his wife replies. There is a marital sex scene soon after this. The audience knows that whatever Louise feels for Mitsuko, Louise does truly love her husband.
Still, gossip is a concern. Louise wonders if maybe she and Mitsuko should stop seeing each other. "If you leave me, I'll kill myself," Mitsuko threatens. In another scene, Mitsuko dresses up as a geisha for Louise, putting the latter in the odd position of a woman in the place of a male client for a geisha.
Meanwhile, the Nazi government seeks to "clean up" its ranks. Heinz's cousin Wolf von Hollendorf (Hanns Zischler) is out to expose General Werner von Heiden (Massimo Girotti) for homosexuality. A little get-together at the von Hollendorf home is arranged and the general is invited. Entertainment will be provided by a young handsome pianist. Wolf starts complimenting the general for being a "patron of the arts" in all that he has done for the young man. Both pianist and general realize that Wolf is exposing the general as the younger man's sugar daddy.
"It was a lynching and in my house," Louise tells the professor, expressing how dirtied she felt that the general had to flee Germany as a result of the "outing" or, in the parlance of the culture, "cleaning."
Louise tries to stay away from Mitsuko but the latter calls her, seeming desperate. Mitsuko appears ill and even bloodied. "I was pregnant but I took care of it myself," the sick Mitsuko haltingly explained. A Japanese ambassador's daughter pregnant out of wedlock in the 1930s would have caused quite the scandal so that she would illegally abort would be understandable.
However, Louise begins to doubt Mitsuko's story, believing the younger woman made it up to draw Louise back to her. Whatever the truth, their love affair rekindles. Then Louise learns that she is in a kind of "double triangle." Joseph Benno and Mitsuko are having an affair and Benno hopes to marry Mitsuko. He tells Louise that he and Mitsuko deliberately started the rumor that she and Louise were having a lesbian fling to distract attention from their own socially unacceptable inter-racial love affair. "But then Mitsuko really did fall in love with you," he says. Benno wants to marry Mitsuko and insists that Mitsuko is truly pregnant so a marriage is necessary. He bullies Louise into signing an agreement for her not to interfere in the marriage and him not to interfere in their relationship. The two of them cut themselves and sign this legally unenforceable "contract" in blood. Soon Benno is blackmailing Heinz with the bizarre document.
Eventually Heinz decides his wife is endangering his Nazi career and must end the relationship once and for all. Mitsuko hatches a plan that she believes will lead Heinz to accept their relationship. She and Louise will pretend to make a death pact. They will take enough pills to make it seem they tried to commit suicide but not enough to actually die. Heinz treats the wounded women and, while tending to Mitsuko, falls in love with her.
One evening Mitsuko declares, "You are not husband and wife anymore!" She demands the married couple engage in no sexual relationship with each other but only have sex with her. To ensure they do not violate this rule, she insists they take sleeping powders before retiring. They agree to follow this rule even though it means Heinz finds himself falling asleep during the day.
A senior Nazi official calls Heinz on the carpet when a scandal magazine runs an article entitled "Sapphic Love in Diplomatic Circles." This leads to the movie's ultimate crisis and climax.
After that climax, we see Louise back in the professor's office, finishing up her story. Just as she does, the professor finds himself arrested by the Gestapo.
To find the meaning of "The Berlin Affair," we have to understand why Cavani set the story of tangled love in Nazi Germany. Los Angeles Times reviewer Patrick Goldstein decried the Nazi setting as nothing more than a "lurid backdrop." It is this reviewer's belief that the setting was chosen for a very good reason: no culture has ever dealt more destructively and obsessively with both sexual and racial matters than Nazi Germany. Cavani set the story in a society in which ethnic identity was rigid, central, and could even be a matter of life and death. Yet when Louise tries on a kimono, a garment so symbolic of another culture, Cavani suggests a fluidity to ethnic identity. By highlighting Nazi persecution of gay men, a persecution in the guise of "cleaning up" and rooting out "corruption," Cavani points to the corruption inherent in many attempts to combat corruption.
Throughout "The Berlin Affair," love affairs violate taboos - the taboo against love between races, the taboo against love within genders.
Perhaps the most astonishingly bold statement of the film is in the character of Mitsuko. In public, she is a traditionally demure, restrained, submissive Japanese woman. In private, she turns all stereotypes on their head. She is not only bisexual but has no shame, no guilt, no conflict about her attraction to another woman. Even more astonishingly, this Japanese beauty dominates both her male and female love interests. Cavani underlines the power in sexual attraction. Heinz and Louise are both so powerfully attracted to Mitsuko, so sexually dependent on her, that they unquestioningly submit even to her most outrageous demands.
Film restoration expert Jay Fenton commented, "A great deal is going on in this film---------politically, sexually, socially, racially and artistically." A great deal indeed.
