Liliana Cavani deals with the ambivalent relationship between a concentration camp victim (Charlotte Rampling) and her torturer-lover (Dirk Bogarde) in a strange, brooding tale. There is a touch of Last Tango in Paris in this love affair that does not take society or other people into much account.
It has an apartment, albeit furnished and the couple trapped there, serving for their trysts in Vienna of 1957. They meet accidentally, but the past and a group of still ardent Nazis force them to revert to their camp relationship.
Bogarde is an ex-Storm Trooper who now works as a night porter. He belongs to a group who have managed to be acquitted by doing away with witnesses and destroying evidence.
It’s a gritty look at concentration camp quirks, but transposed to a strange drama. Bogarde treads intelligently through his role of an unbalanced man.
