mid-80s “foreign” film, communist prof/writer & his daughter

i saw this film in the united states at an art/foreign theater just a couple years before i moved to the u.s. permanently, so it must’ve been like 1986 or 1987 maybe?? the daughter was pretty and in her 20s, with long wavy dark hair like andie macdowall (i think?). the premise was, her dad was a pacifist and self-described marxist or communist (i think a professor and writer) and he was (according to friends) in general a nice person toward humanity but....not very nice when it came to individual relationships, his daughter included, and i think the movie was about how he was trying to connect with his daughter before he died. i remember him being kinda fat with a receding hair line.

a line of dialogue i remember (because it disgusted me) was about how the father had all the tact of a huge horse farting.

what was the title of this movie? any ideas? thanks so much....it’s been driving me nuts for a long time. important memory for me because it was during my transition from south africa to the united states

edit - movie was english language, i'm thinking from australia or new zealand, maybe u.k. ... pretty sure not south africa