In All That Heaven Allows, it’s ‘only’ class that divides them. That’s part of its elegance - and potency. Fassbinder amplifies all of the oppressive forces that conspire against this couple without compromising either.

Like Rainer Werner Fassbinder's other recent imitations of life, Fear Eats the Soul... achieves a remarkable balance between stylisation and realism.

It even manages something like a happy ending without sugar-coating the still poignantly relevant themes.Timely and heartbreaking, some 43 years after its debut.

Fassbinder famously observed that "love is the best, most perfidious, and most effective instrument of social oppression." This philosophy anchors his film’s central romance, which crosses generational and cultural lines.