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Effi is socially ambitious so she accepts, despite the considerable age difference. In short order she finds herself stranded in a remote Baltic town with a man she barely knows, not that this dents Effi's enthusiasm. She believes her husband to be a decent fellow of firm principle (relative to her moral code, in any case). Yet the Instetten household gives Effi the cold-shoulder, with the housekeeper Johanna (Irm Hermann) taking particular umbrage. Even when Effi falls pregnant her situation remains poor, since the town elite have long since decided that she doesn't fit in. A lapsed Catholic nanny, Roswitha (Ursula Strätz), helps but still Effi comes to innocently spend her time with the inveterate womaniser Major Crampas (Ulli Lommel).
As Effi Briest plays, there is one quality that comes to dominate: the flatness of its emotional landscape. In scene after scene the characters talk past one another, mouthpieces for an interior monologue. Instead of showing us the events that drive this story, Rainer Werner Fassbinder describes them; at times his narration quotes almost verbatim from Theodor Fontane's text. What we have, at least initially, is the unbearable sight of a film suffocating by its own rigidity. Yet curiously this seems to be exactly the mood that Fassbinder is striving for, hoping to remark upon the stifling repression of 19th Century Germany. If so then Fassbinder hits this nail square on; the problem is that this doesn't make for a delightful viewing experience. When emotion must be hidden at all costs, this leaves nothing for the audience to get a hold of.
In line with Fassbinder's wishes, the majority of the cast put no inflection into their speech, avoiding any semblance of an emotional response. Effi Briest feels almost like a rehearsal, where the cast are simply running through their lines without shading in the intricacies. The only character who makes any sort of impression is Roswitha, principally through the hooks that we are given into her past. Strätz induces a response because she's tangible, because she directly interacts with other people. There are moments, near the end, where Schygulla breaks free of Fassbinder's straitjacket but this just enhances our sense of frustration. Effi Briest is tough and impenetrable, its strands thickly packed together; if only there were a way to taste the film's lifeblood.
As usual Fassbinder demonstrates absolute technical control, using Jürgen Jürges and Dietrich Lohmann to photograph his vision. Throughout, Fassbinder's strict stylisation guides the lighting and spatial dynamics of each scene, reinforcing Effi Briest's aura of alienation. Characters are pinned in place by formality, unnatural in the mode of a butterfly museum. To open up the frame, Fassbinder repeatedly employs a clever device; mirrors, placed everywhere, reflect back on the camera. Thus he allows an interpretative flexibility while simultaneously increasing the character's emotional distance; we don't see the "real" protagonists during some key moments, merely their ghosts.
In retrospect it becomes clear that Effi Briest is hardly a film at all, in the traditional sense. Fassbinder is in love with Fontane's words, to the extent that his monochrome creation is pushed into the background by the film's literary source. Unlike the vast majority of movies, which attempt to engage on a visceral level, this is a purely intellectual journey. The oppressive cruelty of Effi's chosen society is stripped repulsively naked, a bloated force that turns the characters into puppets. This environment is the tale's key figure; it means nothing in human terms, yet its influence is all around. The inevitable conclusion is that Effi Briest will appeal to a select group, those able to appreciate its complex, cerebral overtones, arid nature and slippery angst.
That said, there is a caveat: as Fassbinder remarks, "Well, it's a film that really only works in the German language." This is quite correct, although the poorly translated subtitles do little to express the inherent subtlety of Fontane's novel. If you're not fluent in the German language then be prepared to miss out on an important, perhaps critical, aspect.
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