Veronica is discovered by a crusading journalist, once a star of the third Reich's movie machine, she now wastes away in a clinic, addicted to morphine and at the mercy of her doctor with whom which she shares a destructive sado-masochistic relationship. Fassbinder's last film is a dark and un-redemptive tale, a bleak and gripping observation that portrays Veronica's own doomed existence in a much wider social context.