Delphinsommer (2004)

When Nathalie was two years old, her parents, Caroline and Michael Scholl, separated. Two years later, after Caroline married the lawyer Gregor Wagner, a committed member of the “Church of the Lord,” Michael tried to regain custody of his daughter, but he lost in court, and from then on Caroline prevented all contact between father and daughter. The Wagner family lived near Stuttgart, where Nathalie attended a convent school. When she was sixteen, she got a half-sister. Sarah is still a baby when Gregor Wagner moves to Berlin with his wife and children as a leading member of the “Church of the Lord.” Nathalie transfers to a state-run secondary school. She does not take part in dance exercise class and refuses to read the book her class is studying in German lessons—Crazy by Benjamin Lebert—because modern literature is frowned upon in the “Church of the Lord.” Accordingly, Nathalie also does not go with her class to the cinema to see the film adaptation of the novel. Nathalie also stands out from her classmates because of her old-fashioned clothes, and they exclude her. Only Gabriel, the doctor's son, and Yildiz, who is Turkish, try to make contact with Nathalie, but she repeatedly rebuffs them. Friendships with people outside their own religious community are not encouraged in the “Church of the Lord.” Instead of befriending Yildiz or Gabriel, Nathalie becomes friends with Sibille, who is her age but no longer goes to school and has to work in a chip shop. Sibille rebels against the control exerted by the “Church of the Lord.” She wants to become a nurse and is determined to leave her embittered mother, Margot, and the church as soon as she comes of age. Caroline takes Nathalie with her on a missionary visit. They knock on the door of a woman who has just lost her mother. Caroline lies, saying she can understand the woman’s pain because her own mother died of the same illness. Later, Nathalie angrily confronts her mother. Caroline replies, “Sometimes the quickest road to the truth is through a lie.” One day, as Nathalie is sitting on a park bench, a man speaks to her. It is her father, Michael Scholl. After learning that she was in Berlin, he called every school until he found her. He wishes his daughter a happy birthday—she has turned seventeen that day—and presses a card into her hand with the address of the café he runs. Then he says goodbye, sensing how upset Nathalie is by their encounter. Gabriel then comes over; having learned that it is her birthday, he gives her a small silver bracelet with two little dolphins on it. Gabriel, who continues trying to get close to Nathalie, meets Sibille through her. To help Sibille, he talks to his parents, who find her a training place at a hospital in Zurich and get her a train ticket. But Margot discovers the ticket, locks Sibille in, and alerts Gregor. In despair, Sibille throws herself out of the window. Shocked by her friend’s death, Nathalie lets something slip to her parents. Gregor thus learns that she knew about Sibille’s plans and told neither him nor any other member of the “Church of the Lord.” He claims that Nathalie’s misconduct meant he could not bring Sibille back to the right path in time. Therefore, he says, Nathalie is to blame for Sibille’s suicide. Together with Gabriel, Nathalie goes to see her father. Gregor finds out, hits his stepdaughter, and locks her up. When she is grounded again for taking part in dance exercise class at school, she runs away and seeks refuge with Michael, but Gregor has the police bring her back from there and files a complaint against Michael. Nathalie is locked up and beaten again, this time by the head of the congregation, and systematically, in order to drive the evil out of her. The abuse of her daughter horrifies Caroline. She unlocks Nathalie’s door, says goodbye to her, and lets Gregor take her and the baby to a clinic on the pretext that Sarah is ill, so that Michael and Gabriel can pick Nathalie up. Only at the hospital does Caroline admit to her husband that she deceived him.