Chinese Roulette

Anna Karina

Married Gerhard and Ariane Christ and their teenage daughter Angela Christ are an upper class family living in Munich. Stemming from a childhood disease, Angela wears a brace on her leg and requires crutches to walk in her permanent physical disability. Concurrent planned trips by the spouses, Gerhard's to Oslo and Ariane's to Milan, are both fronts as each has for years embarked on an affair apiece, Gerhard with Irene Cartis, a French hairdresser, and Ariane with Kolbe, Gerhard's assistant. What neither further knows is that the other is having his/her latest tryst at their country mansion. Stern Kast and her adult son Gabriel, an aspiring writer, who are the caretakers of the mansion, have long known about the Christs' respective affairs and have, until now, managed to keep the secrets, doing so for their own benefit. The mansion becomes even more crowded as beyond Gerhard, Irene, Ariane, Kolbe, Kast and Gabriel, a seventh and eighth arrival are Angela and her mute governess Traunitz, Angela who somewhat orchestrated this gathering in wanting to expose her parents' respective affairs. Angela has a further mission in embarking on a game of Chinese roulette including all eight members of the mansion, it basically a question and answer game of psychology to uncover how the game players truly view the others. The questions are what Angela's end goal is and whether she can achieve it in the eight playing the game.—Huggo