Barbara Beutler

Five more-or-less distinct sections, all featuring "Freak" Orlando, a woman played by the late Magdalena Montezuma, who appears in various guises and deformities throughout.

A treatise on love and desire tainted by harsh reality of capitalism, in which submission to the laws of lust-as-commerce is played out by five prostitutes and their pimp, who pits them against one another so that they are incapable of standing up to him collectively.

The first film in Rudolf Thome's "Forms of Love" trilogy is the most incisive. It's a comedy-drame chronicling the ups and downs in the relationship of an unmarried couple (Adriana Altaras, Vladimir Weigl). When she tries to persuade him that they should have a child, he escapes the controversy by becoming preoccupied with his new aquarium and microscope. Their struggles to settle their differences and accept new responsibilities are presented intelligently, realistically and with low-key wit and irony.