Volker Spengler delivers an extraordinary performance as Elvira Weishaupt -- once a blue-collar butcher named Erwin -- who underwent a sex-change operation to please a potential male lover (Gottfried John), only to end up forsaken. Trying to come to grips with the splintered identity she created for herself, the unhappy Elvira returns to old haunts in this gut-wrenching drama from prolific German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.