Fox and His Friends
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Year Released: 1975
Rating: 2.5
Simpleton Fox (played by Fassbinder) wins the lottery and finds new a "friend" in a bourgeois uber-sophisticate who pretends to love him while milking him of every cent of his winnings on a lavish apartment, a new car and vacation to Morocco. What might have worked as a shorter film gets worn thin by the conclusion, as you can figure out early on that it's all going to end in tragedy and sadness for Fox, who is designed to be little more than a doltish, sacrificial lamb for you to pity and see suffer. It isn't especially bad - Fassbinder's pessimism and view of friendship as being parasitic is truthful - but then it isn't nearly as complex as something like The Marriage of Maria Braun.
