Eine zweimalige Frau (2004)

Rebekka Butt is a lawyer who wants to enter politics. But just then, photos appear in the press that seem to show Rebekka dancing in a high-slit dress at the “Red Rita” nightclub. The lawyer, who is seeking the post of senator for justice, immediately suspects a political intrigue. At first, the press doesn’t realize that the woman in the photos is Tatjana Laake, because she and Rebekka look so alike they could be identical twins. Unlike Rebekka, Tatjana can barely make ends meet and also has to care for her 12-year-old son, Lucas. She also owes a substantial sum to a loan shark. Rebekka Butt has her double investigated, since Tatjana has recently been showing up wherever Rebekka is invited. Tatjana grew up in Fürstenfeldbruck. Her father, Alexander, is an architect, and her mother, Regina, is a homemaker. Neither of them has any connection to Berlin, which would seem to rule out any family relationship between the two women. Tatjana moved from Munich to Berlin three years ago. Before having her son, she was a flight attendant and was involved with a pilot, who is Lucas’s father. He makes no effort to pay child support. Tatjana will soon have to move out of her apartment. Since her son was born, she has had no steady job and picks up work here and there. She is also unable to repay a large loan. Rebekka is delighted by this news. When the lawyer tries to buy Tatjana off with a check, Tatjana refuses it. Rebekka wants Tatjana to appear with her before the press to clear up once and for all that she has a double. An attempt to get photos of the two women together fails because Tatjana sees through the scheme. Then, however, she receives a letter from the law firm Butt and Krappe. Hans Christian von Aschleben has filed a complaint against Tatjana. He claims she wheedled a ring out of him, although he had given it to her as a gift. Tatjana had met the baron at one of the parties she attended, in effect as Rebekka Butt, and let him believe she was Rebekka. But Aschleben was the one playing a dishonest game: he expected a very special favor from the future senator for justice. In the end, it turns out that Rebekka’s parents were living in East Berlin at the time, and her father wanted to go to the West, but her mother didn’t want to go with him. She had just given birth to twins. Her father then took Tatjana with him and went west. There he met Regina Laake and married her, and died only a few months later. Rebekka makes sure there is no trial. She also arranges for Lucas to be allowed to go on a class trip to Berlin by pretending to be Tatjana’s sister and leaving his class teacher, Frau Fröhlich, with little choice. She also wants to make sure the nightclub where Tatjana works, which was due to close, can stay open. Her own private life will change, too: she finally gives in to the advances of her partner, Rainer Krappe, who has been in love with her for a long time. And now she has a sister, whom she happily embraces. Tatjana, meanwhile, has found a man in reporter Bert Schubert who is very interested in her and gets along well with Lucas.