As European films go, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1971) didn't set the cinema world aflame. But it did spark a cult following that grew more heated when Fassbinder himself adapted the film into a 1973 play of the same title. That play, which must have seemed a melodramatic shocker more than a quarter century ago, now comes across as an intriguing, theatrical high-wire act that teeters between high-voltage emotion and camp.

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is the story of a sophisticated fashion designer (Petra) who, after the end of her marriage, finds herself enraptured by a beautiful, lower-class, bisexual woman (Karin). The two become lovers and Pe[...]