Hanna Schygulla stars in this bleak Fassbinder drama as Effi Briest, a tomboyish seventeen-year-old German girl living with her parents. Though simple, Effi still has some social ambition, ambition that causes her to accept a proposal of marriage from
Baron Geert Von Instetten, a Prussian diplomat who is much older than Effi. Unfortunately, neither the Baron's family nor anyone in the secluded town she now calls home accept Effi as an equal. Starved for companionship and finding none from her busy husband, Effi begins an innocent friendship with a well-known womanizer that may jeopardize even her tenuous position as the Baron's wife.
