Ein Reihenhaus steht selten allein (2014)

The cosmopolitan graphic designer Jan and divorce lawyer Anne Börner move with their two children, fifteen-year-old Lisa and eight-year-old Lukas, into a 125-square-meter house in a row-house development in a Frankfurt suburb. Their new neighbors are chronically nosy, critically scrutinizing every move the family members make. The neighbors also have no qualms about burdening the Börners with their problems and giving them unsolicited advice, whether about raising children, landscaping the front garden, or anything else. Since Jan is self-employed and works from home—drawing comics and advertising characters—he is the only man around during the day in the development, and the women who stay at home practically besiege him. Jan grows increasingly irritated by his annoying neighbors. The neighbor living right next door, Werner Matzerath, gets on his nerves in particular. A pungent smell of fish constantly drifts over from his property. Matzerath is smug and thinks he can treat his wife however he pleases. When Stefan Binz moves into one of the nearby houses, Jan is more than surprised to recognize his partner as Maren Köhler, his first great love, though he plays this down to his wife. Back then, he and Maren shared a love of manga. One of his pieces even adorns her back. Jan is increasingly frustrated that he can hardly get any work done because the doorbell keeps ringing. In this situation, which he finds far from satisfying, Maren is something of a ray of light for him in the Grünfelder development. Maren makes it clear that she would have no objection to rekindling her relationship with Jan, which makes it all the harder for him to resist her. One evening, Jan and his wife Anne have a fierce argument. Annoyed, Jan sets off for a pub in Frankfurt, but as soon as he steps outside, he is knocked down with a punch and then hit with an eel as well. Matzerath blames him because his wife, Kerstin, sought Anne’s advice and now wants a divorce. Things turn especially nasty for the tough guy when, on Anne’s advice, his wife throws him out of the house—the house he had transferred to her for tax reasons. When he actually moves out, not even his German shepherd, Blondie, wants to go with him. Just as Jan has almost decided to give in to Maren’s attempts to seduce him, the neighbor boy’s cry that something has happened startles him. Lukas has fallen off the trampoline. At the hospital, he is diagnosed with a concussion. Shortly afterward, Anne tells Jan that she slept with her young colleague Sascha. She wishes it hadn’t happened, but it did. A little later, half-drunk, Anne apologizes to her husband in a touching manner. While Jan has decided to go ahead and hold the obligatory welcome barbecue, Maren moves out of the development. As she says goodbye to Jan, she tells him she has realized that all of this simply isn’t for her. Anne has one more surprise for her husband: she secretly sent his manuscript, which caricatures the neighbors in the development, to a publisher, and it looks very much as though they are interested in working with him. While the party is still going on, a moving van pulls up, and everyone calls out in unison, “It’s the new neighbors!” A family waves to them, and Anne recognizes the man approaching as her former boyfriend, Sven.