Du hast gesagt, dass du mich liebst (2006)

Johanna Perl has always kept busy throughout her life. A former elite athlete, she became a swimming coach after her career ended. But since retiring, she has felt empty. Her former husband had cheated on her and left her. She begins talking to trees and to her dead mother, until one day she responds to a personal ad placed by a writer named Johannes. In a newspaper ad, Johannes is looking for a woman who will be his “sister, mother, saint, whore, companion, and lover,” and Johanna wants to be that for him. Inspired by her own daughter Sophia, who rushes into marriage, she lets Johannes move into her apartment after they have known each other only a short time. At first, she still insists on maintaining a formal distance. They sleep in separate bedrooms and address each other formally as “Sie.” But the distance begins to crumble, they grow closer, and Johanna becomes Johannes’s muse. At last, the unsuccessful writer, who had already written four novels but had not yet managed to publish any, can celebrate the great success he has long yearned for. With “You Said You Loved Me,” he anticipates the crisis in their relationship through his writing and scores a major bestseller. In the heady rush of his success, he cheats on Johanna with another woman. But after Johanna briefly drives him away, she has second thoughts and gives him a second chance. Johannes and Johanna marry and go to Spain for their honeymoon.