Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) The 105-minute "Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss" or just "Veronika Voss" is a Rainer Werner Fassbinder film from 1982, almost 35 years old and among the finals works by one of the most successful German filmmakers. He died the very same year an untimely death at under 40. The title is a giveaway as these Fassbinder films usually include female characters and always sound a bit pretentious. For him, it was a return back to the roots as he started his career 15 years earlier with black-and-white films and this one also lacks color. 4 cast members received German Film Awards nominations here, but nobody won and this includes the late lead actress Rosel Zech and also Hilmar Thate, who I usually quite like. But sadly, I felt he was mostly forgettable in here just like Zech and many other aspects from this movie. It is about the fate of an actress who seems to struggle in keeping her career going or even in terms of improving it. We are told about her fate in terms pf professional life and private life, when she is on the lookout for love. Will she find success in either of the two areas? Or will it end in disaster as it sometimes does in Fassbinder films? Watch for yourself. Or don't as in my opinion, this film is far away from Fassbinder's most convincing works. Then again, I am not the very greatest fan of the man's films, so maybe you will think differently here. However, if you have seen nothing from the man don't start with this one. It is not easily accessible at all. Thumbs down from me.

semiotechlab-658-95444 It is quite amazing that despite the huge literature about Fassbinder's work, there seems to be not one single monograph dedicated explicitly to the function of the epilogues in Fassbinder's movies.The most known of the "episodes" is the 2-hours long film "My dream of the dream of Franz Biberkopf", a summary and personal interpretation as well as continuation of "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (1978/79), published as part 14 of the mini-series. Characteristic of this all the other Fassbinder-Eplilogues are: Apocalyptic decoration, disruption of any possible plot lines and connections between the characters; transportation of a text spoken by a figure onto other figures who repeat that text, but in an other context; basic topics: religion, end of life, apocalypse, revelation, resurrection, connection between sexuality and church. A special function is given to the rather short epilogue, that is embedded in the film, in "Veronika Voss" (1982): After the former UFA-star has gotten a chance to celebrate her own "glamorous" farewell, she dreams the whole evening again and varies so-to-say the crucial moments: What would have happened if she had told Robert Krohn about her morphine-addiction? Was there a chance to still escape her destruction by her psychiatrist? To start a new life with Robert? To resume her career? Only through this epilogue it becomes clear why Veronika did not take her chance of escaping her addiction and imprisoning when she meets Robert for the first time in the Geiselgasteig forest, why she prefers to lie on herself instead of giving up her attitude which alone enables Dr. Katz to turn her into her propriety. Through the epilogue, we realize that Veronika Voss had started her "trip into the light" (Fassbinder) already a long time ago: a trip of no return. So, one is seduced to speculate that Fassbinder's last movie "Querelle" (1982) is nothing but an epilogue chosen by the dying director in order to interpret and reinterpret his life and his 66 films (every episode counted). Going back in time, changing the switches - and how would the present look then, now? Franz Biberkopf gets, pace epilogue, another change, turns back to life and spends his last decades in complete anonymity. Veronika Voss does not get a chance anymore, because she is one of Fassbinder's "light"-persons, like Herr R. in "Why does Herr R. run amok", Fox in "Fox and his friends", Lily Brest in "Shadow of Angels", Effi Briest in "Effi Briest", Herr Bauer in "Fear of Fear", Mother Küsters in "Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven", Elvira/Erwin in "A Year with 13 Moons" - here one might also mention the persons who "survive" crippled or demented - like Martha in "Martha", Margot in "Fear of Fear", Peter in "I only want you to love me", Franz Xaver Bolwieser in "The Stationmaster's Wife" and many others of Fassbinder's universe. For Querelle and his friends, the question does not rise anymore, since the whole story is situated already in an imaginary future to which Zehetbauer's total artificial studio-set corresponds marvelously. The end of interpretations and reinterpretations as given in the "Epilogues" takes place only when the present Topoi have overcome and have been substituted by a future Ou-Topia.

Bob Taylor Thsi is a wonderful noir by Fassbinder that recalls the classic film actors more than it does the gritty analyses of post war German economic success that he gave us in Lola and Maria Braun. I thought about Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, Preminger's Laura and Hitchcock's Notorious... anything but a remake of a drug-addiction film.Rosel Zech as Veronika Voss is wonderful; her wistful faded elegance in the scenes with Krone is memorable. Hilmar Thate plays a reporter who's in over his head trying to write about a faded film star, as his editor reminds him; it's a performance that reminds me of Dana Andrews in Laura. The cinematography by Xaver Schwarzenberger is superb: the rainy night scenes and the glaring white of the clinic were very well rendered.

m67165 This movie left me feeling rather low. Its world is quite bleak. People are either strong or weak in the face of a society that feels cold. Looks like being strong won't make any difference in the long run. A very sad tale with beautiful black and white photography.