Der große Rudolph (2018)

This social satire tells a fictional story about Munich fashion designer Rudolph Moshammer, who was murdered in 2005. In the 1980s, he is a prominent fashion designer and runs a shop on Munich’s Maximilianstraße. His financiers and investors, including Gerdi and Toni, are less interested in his fame than in the money, however, and want to make greater profits from his business. His shop is also meant to attract customers from the worlds of money and high nobility, such as the extravagant Count Konstantin Antzenberg, known as “Dudu.” Moshammer therefore looks for an attractive, seductive young woman to work in sales, much to Mama Else’s horror. He finds one in Evi, a podiatrist from Augsburg who does not particularly stand out at first glance and is somewhat clumsy, but whom Moshammer transforms into an exciting woman. And, with Evi’s help, Count Antzenberg does indeed give Moshammer a major order. Afterward, Moshammer lets Evi in on some of his secrets to success and shows her that, above all, you have to stimulate people’s imaginations and project the right image. As the starting point for his creations, he sometimes uses department-store goods, which he slightly alters and then sells to his customers for a considerable sum under the right chic reputation—also because they are, after all, Moshammer creations. Meanwhile, Mama Else thinks that the way to impress the rich, and especially the nobility, is to make a public show of social commitment. Moshammer does help homeless people, thinking of his own youth, which was at times very poor and threatened by homelessness, but he wants to do so quietly. Against his will, Mama Else arranges a meeting with a television reporter and makes Rudolph’s charitable work public, hoping to exploit it in the media and win public sympathy. He is supposed to hand out wool blankets to homeless people in his shop, on camera. The event turns into a practical disaster because the blankets cannot be obtained in time, so he gives away mostly empty packages. But the desired TV footage is captured, and Mama Else’s plan works: Moshammer becomes more popular. Evi is repeatedly favored by Moshammer, only to be humiliated again through Mama Else’s influence—Mama Else disliked her from the start. Evi already thinks she has been fired, but Moshammer finds her and brings her back. Mama Else still dislikes Evi, however, and begins plotting against her behind the scenes, for instance by accusing her of stealing an expensive watch. Torn between his mother’s account and Evi’s, Moshammer decides, while they are on their way to “Dudu” Antzenberg’s engagement party at his castle, not to take Evi because of the suspicion that she stole the watch. He drops her off at the nearest bus stop in his Rolls-Royce. At first she is bewildered and disappointed, but then decides to get into the party on her own, since she is on the guest list as Moshammer’s companion. There, she gets drunk, is pulled onto the dance floor by the host’s brother, and eventually vomits on the dress and face of Dudu’s fiancée, who, in addition, wrongly suspects that Evi is his secret girlfriend. Moshammer has seen through the fact that Mama Else staged the watch theft, but Evi and Moshammer never see each other again. He continues to make a successful splash in high society as a fashion king. She sends back the elaborate ball gown, packs her bags, and leaves the city; at the end, she is seen at the window of an express train. A voice-over reveals that her time with Moshammer lasted only two weeks, but changed her greatly and made her more self-confident, and that she decides to complete her advanced secondary-school qualification. She wanted to write to him several times, but never finished. In the closing scene, he too is shown pulling a sheet of paper from a typewriter and throwing it away.