Allein unter Männern (2001)

Assistant veterinarian Dr. Tana Fechner works at Munich University Hospital, specifically in the department for large domestic mammals. She ends her affair with the married Dr. Marco Montesi, who works there too, because he makes no move to leave his wife. Montesi is reluctant to accept this and repeatedly pressures Tana, but she stands firm. At the university, Tana has just applied for the vacant senior physician position. Her colleague Dr. Alexander Pfleghar is also applying for the post, making them competitors. Tana is researching Borna disease, an illness caused by a dangerous virus that mainly affects horses and sheep and has a paralyzing effect on the affected animal’s central nervous system. She is writing her doctoral dissertation on the subject, but has not yet been able to finish it because she still needs two acute cases involving infected animals to convincingly support her statistics. Tana and Bernhard Bausch, a doctor and riding-stable manager who has returned from America and stepped in for his ill father, fall in love after a short time. But one of Bausch’s horses, the gray Arthos, contracts the very disease Tana is researching, and she comes under suspicion of being responsible for the infection. Tana cannot shake the feeling that someone is deliberately sabotaging her. At first, she suspects Dr. Marco Montesi of wanting to harm her out of wounded vanity. But her new romance is also dampened when Tana discovers that Bausch is married too. She withdraws from him and keeps her distance. Then another horse from the Bausch riding stable falls ill, this time Leroy. In both cases of Borna disease, the animals have been infected with exactly the strain of virus Tana cultivated in the laboratory for her research. Animal keeper Mirek finds a syringe in the straw in the horse’s stall and hands it to Bausch. Bausch confronts Tana with this. She tells him that if he thinks she is so stupid and heartless as to do something like that and then leave the syringe lying there, he should go to the police. Bausch says that is exactly what he will do. But Tana’s boss, Professor Dr. Poschinger, who is friends with the elder Bausch, is adamantly opposed to involving the police because he fears for the institute’s good reputation. He also makes it clear that her career, which has only just begun, could come to an abrupt end if a complaint is filed against her. Tana now decides to try to find out for herself who did this to her and the horses. She asks Dr. Alexander Pfleghar, whom she trusts, for help. By chance, during her search she comes across an expensive lighter that Pfleghar received as a gift from his girlfriend Madeleine and lost. When she confronts him with it, he admits everything without showing any remorse, and even laughs at her when Tana calls him a despicable, scheming person. He merely replies that he wanted the senior physician position and was prepared to do whatever it took to get it. Since she cannot prove anything, he tells her to be a good loser. However, he has not counted on Bausch hearing everything through Tana’s switched-on mobile phone. Before things finally turn out well for Tana, she and Pfleghar are still placed in acute mortal danger. In the end, it is virtually certain that Tana will get the senior physician position, since Professor Poschinger says the application deadline has been extended for her because of the events. Things are also reconciled in her personal life, as she and Bernhard Bausch make up.