Eine ganz heiße Nummer (2011)

In the Lower Bavarian municipality of Marienzell, the economic crisis is driving residents into unemployment. After the local glassworks closes, the two owners of the Lebensmittel Brandner general store, Waltraud Wackernagel and Maria Brandner, and their shop assistant Lena wait in vain for the store’s last remaining customers, who have meanwhile started shopping at the discount supermarket in Zwiesel instead. On top of that, one day Mr. Sonnleitner from Bayernbank turns up at the store without warning and announces that the business loan that had secured their future is being terminated, with four weeks’ notice. Since Waltraud’s husband lost his job when the glassworks closed, the couple are also at risk of losing their home. Waltraud, Maria, and Lena have only a few weeks to escape their predicament by earning extra money. The harebrained idea of secretly setting up a sex hotline soon seems like their salvation—but it also threatens to cause a huge scandal in their strictly Catholic hometown. After only a short time, the three women receive their first account statement from the hotline, showing about €7,000. But their secret business is exposed when the mayor’s wife, Gerti Oberbauer, catches Maria moaning in the store. She has her somewhat intellectually disabled son Jakob take photos of the three women while they are on the phone, then sends them to the local newspaper. The paper comes out on precisely the day the dean visits the village to see the new designs for the windows of Regensburg Cathedral. That evening, after the dean leaves the village in outrage, most of the furious villagers march with torches to Maria’s house, where her two friends manage to take refuge just in time. Maria tells the mob that they have not really done anything wrong and that the villagers are also to blame, since they had preferred shopping at the discount store. After her father, who needed care, dies, Maria sets off on a long trip to South America. Mr. Sonnleitner, who turns out to be a hotline customer and had wanted very much to meet her in person, cannot dissuade her. Meanwhile, Waltraud launches a career as a “sexpert” on local television, while Lena begins a relationship with the young farmer Willi. The mayor’s wife opens her own sex hotline.