Dora Heldt: Unzertrennlich (2014)

Christine’s 40th birthday is just around the corner. In the meantime, she has moved out of the shared apartment with Doro and Dennis and into her own house in Hamburg. She has also resumed her affair with Richard. When his wife and daughter suddenly show up during a romantic afternoon at his house, Christine realizes that, despite all his assurances, he has no intention of leaving his family. And she can’t talk to Doro about it, because she has kept it from her that she and Richard have gotten back together. Kai, Dennis’s boyfriend, has moved into the shared apartment. The two of them want to get married. Then Dennis’s mother, Angela, suddenly arrives from America. She doesn’t know that her son is gay and thinks he is planning to marry Doro. Dennis doesn’t have the courage to tell her the truth, putting his relationship with Kai at risk. Christine has been commissioned to write a column for a women’s magazine. At her meeting at the magazine’s offices, she meets the editor-in-chief, Sven, with whom she had earlier ridden up in the lift, unaware of who he was. During that ride, she had made some remarks that put her in a rather awkward position. Nevertheless, she gets the commission: the column is to be about “my best friend.” Since she doesn’t want to write about her former best friend Antje, whom she had betrayed by having an affair with her ex-husband, or about Doro, her current best friend, she decides to write about Linda, her first best friend from school. When Christine and Sven get stuck in the lift after an editorial meeting, the two tentatively grow closer. Doro feels hurt by Christine’s column, but Dennis, who is organizing Christine’s 40th birthday party with Doro, sees a silver lining: he wants to invite all of Christine’s former schoolmates, since she doesn’t have any friends left otherwise. Christine realizes almost too late how deeply she has hurt Doro by keeping her new relationship with Richard secret, and wants to make amends with a new column about her current best friend. But Sven insists that the column that has already been approved be printed. So she throws the manuscript away. When Doro happens to leaf through the new women’s magazine at a newsstand, she sees the column about her friendship with Christine. Sven has fished it out of the wastepaper basket and had it printed after all. At the birthday party, they make up in a grand reconciliation, and when Sven turns up too, Christine’s happiness is complete.