A FREE WOMAN
Directed by VOLKER SCHLONDORFF
Screenplay by VOLKER SCHLONDORFF and MARGARETHE VON TROTTA
In the best and the truest sense, this is a woman's picture. Angry and rueful, it is an attempt to get at some of the political, legal and social complications that tie women down, humble them and sometimes defeat them. Heavily naturalistic in mode, the film makes good and pertinent drama out of emotional suffocation.
Elisabeth is quite an ordinary young woman: pretty, smart and young enough to feel stirrings of ambition. As the movie begins, she has just...