A Free Woman

Volker Schlöndorff's film opens in Munich with a divorced woman in her thirties. Elisabeth wants to build her own life: find work, rent a flat, keep custody of her son. The film shows how each of those is blocked in turn, with the employer, the lawyer, the ex-husband and the institutions all giving the same answer. It builds no great drama, showing instead how bureaucracy and everyday convention wear a person down. Its title suggests not a hope but a fire that goes out quickly. Margarethe von Trotta plays the lead and co-wrote the screenplay with Schlöndorff, moving into directing herself a few years later. It is a hard document of West Germany in the 1970s.