Word: schygulla
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...Reinhold pushes other things on Franz: his cast-off women. Soon the one-armed man is a secondhand stud for a series of gross, silly and pathetic trollops. There are three exceptions: Lina (Elisabeth Trissenaar), gorgeous and sassy, whom Franz meets soon after his release from prison; Eva (Hanna Schygulla), a former mistress who is now an expensive call girl; and Mieze (Barbara Sukowa), a simple, gentle girl of small shrugs and a guileless smile. By the end, with Reinhold's malefic help, she and Franz will have become the secret agents of their own destruction...
...escape from Paris, Filling this carriage are a scandalous/novelist/social historian/pornographer named Restif de la Bretonne (Jean-Louis Barrault); an aging but still engaging Casanova (Marcello Mastroianni); the dry English essayist Thomas Paine (Harvey Keitel); a sumptious Comtesse Sophie de la Borde, lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette (Hanna Schygulla); and various peripheral caricatures of the aristocracy. The wit, the life-blood of an era contained in one carriage, offer the potential for a rich entertainment, but the result is an uneven and tedious sequence of quarrels and flirtations, the names and costumes of history failing to conceal the mediocrity...
...THESE brightnesses are exceptions to a general flow of indistinction. The attempts at serious discussion of the social and political implications of the Revolution would be better left out, as would the character of Tom Paine, who speaks essays rather than conversation. Hanna Schygulla, as the Comtesse, has gone from the cold severity of her Fassbinder mold to a comparably fixed part of decadent and shallow seductress--melting her audiences with a look that oozes sexuality. But if her excesses are intended as some sort of comment on the monarchy, or if the excerpts of serious analysis are intended...
...spends his time fending off women rather than seducing them; Tom Paine (Harvey Keitel), pamphleteer of the American rebellion; and the journalist Restif de la Bretonne (Jean-Louis Barrault), to name just the historical personages aboard. Among the fictional creations are a lady-in-waiting to the Queen (Hanna Schygulla), Her Majesty's snippy homosexual hairdresser, a widow in need of consolation, a judge, an arms manufacturer and an aging opera singer heading for a small role in the provinces. Some know, some suspect, some do not particularly care who is in the coach ahead. Some will have turned...
...posters for the movie suggest a tale of suspense and intrigue, portraying Ganz and Schygulla crawling along what seems to be a dark passageway. Actually, they are dragging themselves along the carpeted floor of her mansion into the bedroom where they will fiddle as Beirut burns. There is no suspense, no tension in this film only the sustained drone of suppressed angst. Circle of Deceit lacks the mythic color and intensity of Schlondorff's best-known film The Tin Drum. Where the bizarre fantasy of The Tin Drum terrifies and disgusts, the efficient realism of Circle of Deceit fades into...