This inadequacy is what makes them markers of true feeling. Cliches and stereotypes should be cherished, for they call attention to their own failure to convey what they mean. They are the only suitable language for emotions that can't be put into words. They indicate by their impotence what they cannot express directly. Every deep feeling is thus a wax museum statue of itself.
Nothing is more excessive than banality, as drag queens know.
No wonder the female actors in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant often give the impression of really being gay men in drag. It's because this film is so campy that it's also so emotionally compelling. Let it serve here as an emblem, an allegory of suspended desire. It's not loss, exactly, but something more uncomfortable. Being stranded in the middle, perhaps, unable to advance or retreat, neither here nor there.