Austrian actress Y Sa Lo, makes yet another Fassbinder appearance as a prostitute! Although she made very little outside the Fassbinder work she did, Y Sa Lo is still a star capable of much more; and she has amazing looks to back it up, and always looks exciting, whenever she appears.

Indeed, Y Sa Lo’s first (and repeated) appearance in Lola, is as Lola’s microphone stand, an effect which perfectly captures the Blue Angel style of decadence which Fassbinder so clearly sought for this movie.

Y Sa Lo sometimes seems to wander in and out of films, as she does here – and she has a marvellously intimate relationship with Lola, whom she looks at admiringly and erotically, often cuddling into Lola on stage, very like a child.

Her other great appearance in Lola is naked, save for a nearly non-existent French waitress style costume, and a teapot, serving up in the brothel during downtime; without doubt the scantiliest clad of all the scantily clad women who work there. Of course Schukert’s brothel is easy to light in bright red, and as much of the film happens here, it could be suggested that it is these colours that spill out every which way they can in the movie, even into the church. There is still an amazing quality here though, which will light two people in dialogue in two different colours; one in green and one in red, say, with someone lit in lilac in the background; something you may never see in any other film.

Often you hear of actors who will not perform nude roles. For Fassbinder, whose films feature their fair share of nudity, one way or another, Y Sa Lo seems to be the opposite; he always asks her to be nude, one way or another. We know that he had individual feelings and attitudes towards all of his main players, and it seems more likely that he liked her because she was uninhibited about her body (as he was too, as he demonstrated in Germany in Autumn) and so her presence on set prompted him to see what he could use her for.