TOM FOOL takes us back to the moment when women finally began to change the rules of the game. Otto Meier is a superb portrait of what still passed, in 1970s Germany, for an ordinary working man. Obsessed with the minute hierarchies of his factory workplace, used to taking his wife Martha completely for granted and inclined to see his stroppy 16-year-old son as a rival rather than a child in his care, Otto finds his world shattered when a terminal row with his son drives Martha to pack her bag and leave, leaving him alone to deal with the insecurities and alienations of his working life.
Kroetz charts this story of breakdown with a wonderful, rich yet cold-eyed hyperrealism that is his hallmark.
