Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film begins with young Effi Briest (Hanna Schygulla) recounting how her mother, though in love with a young man, married an older one with an established position. That young man--now older and well-off--comes back to their town and asks for Effi's hand in marriage, which her parents grant. But gradually her husband's aloof behavior leads her into an affair with a handsome soldier--a brief affair, but one that comes back to haunt Effi when she thinks she's left it far behind. The gorgeous black-and-white cinematography of Effi Briest captures the stark, stratified world of Effi's life; Schygulla's delicate performance expresses her sad and tender heart. Though the movie is perhaps too tied to the slow rhythms of the novel from which it was adapted, its elegant style and meticulous analysis of a rigid and hypocritical society has won great acclaim.