Charleys Tante (1996)

Waldemar Pückler, the owner of a chain of butcher shops in Berlin, has been swindled out of five million dollars by Stefan Lohmann, an investment adviser at a Hong Kong investment bank. His bank gives him one week to prevent his businesses from being seized. To that end, he travels to Munich with his daughter and her friend to meet Lucia d’Alvarez, the German-Argentine “Cattle Baroness,” and go into business with her. She has come to Munich to find partners for converting her ranch to hemp cultivation, and also to meet her nephew Karl-Heinz, known as Charley, and Attila, her old childhood friend. Lohmann has also come to Munich to lie low in the villa he shares with his brother Frank. But Frank is planning a big party at the house with Charley, and Pückler’s daughter and her friend are expected to attend. For this reason, and because the key to his wardrobe has gone missing, Lohmann initially takes a suite at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where Pückler is also staying. When Pückler discovers that the man responsible for his financial predicament is staying at the same hotel, he wants revenge. Lohmann tries to escape by “borrowing” a dress belonging to the Cattle Baroness, whom he met on the flight and has fallen in love with, and passing himself off as Lucia d’Alvarez. Pückler tries to pay “her” a visit, but Lohmann manages to get away to the upscale Schumann’s bar. The real Lucia, however, was supposed to meet her old friend Attila there. Since he has not seen his childhood sweetheart since they were children, he immediately mistakes Lohmann for her. When the real Lucia arrives, Lohmann flees with Attila in tow to his house, intending to shed his false identity at the party, which is now in full swing. But Pückler turns up there too, to collect his daughter, whom he had forbidden to attend the party and had actually sent to the theater. So Lohmann is forced to keep up his false identity as the host’s aunt and fend off the butcher’s advances, including a marriage proposal. In between, he has to change clothes several times because the real aunt has arrived, searching for her mysterious double—and Pückler eventually mistakes her for the impostor himself. At last, the showdown comes, and Lohmann reveals his true identity. He manages to appease Pückler by arranging a business partnership between him and Lucia d’Alvarez, enabling the butcher to avert the bankruptcy looming over him. However, Pückler gives up the butcher business and enters the hemp trade. Lohmann and Lucia d’Alvarez go to Argentina together to build their hemp empire there.