Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer—arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She’s in a fairly satisfactory S&M relationship with her assistant Marlene. Soon, she develops an obsession with fashion model Karin. The two women live happily together for a while, but when Karin displays her irritation with Petra’s possessiveness, things become dramatically tense.
»A film, a novel, any work is something which expands, expands your life. Because it's not purely a question of coping with life, but of trying to understand certain aspects of life. So you have to show it. Of course, not every relationship is always as sadomasochistic as I often show it to be, but if you show it to be as insignificant and restrained as it is in reality, it would scarcely be visible.« (Reiner Werner Fassbinder)