Halbe Hundert (2012)

Fifty-year-old hand surgeon Anne Kater has made it in life. She is successful at work, owns a fast sports car, and has a stylish house. But her marriage to Klaus, a teacher who spent years looking after their daughter and the household, is over. He left her only recently and, Anne believes, is now with a much younger woman. Their 17-year-old daughter Sophie went with him. To get revenge on her husband, Anne takes her friend Fiona’s advice and books an escort, “Josh,” for the upcoming surgeons’ conference. She falls in love with him. Charlotte Merian, by contrast, was a housewife for decades and sacrificed herself for her family. Her three adult sons still live at home, as does her mother-in-law, who has dementia and needs Charlotte’s care. After a stranger on the bus calls Charlotte “Grandma,” she wants to feel young and beautiful again. Encouraged by her friend Fiona, she visits a plastic surgeon to fulfil her dream of having a smaller bust. But instead of cosmetic surgery, she receives a breast cancer diagnosis. Charlotte refuses to give up, however, and has her breast amputated immediately, without much deliberation. This even gives her the courage to break out of her old life, because she enjoyed the peace and the days in hospital. Never before had she been allowed to be so much on her own, free of all the stress of family life. So she abruptly decides to leave her husband and moves in with Fiona until she finds a place of her own. Her family cannot understand it: they are now losing their cleaner, cook, and all-purpose help. But hoping that this is the only way to beat the cancer once and for all, Charlotte will not be held back. As her family situation subsequently improves—her husband learns to appreciate her again, her adult sons move out, and her mother-in-law is placed in professional care—Charlotte considers returning to her husband. The third friend, boutique owner Fiona Gutzeit, has been divorced three times and is desperately trying to stay young and attractive. She still believes in true love and wants to look beautiful and desirable for the “right man.” But when she learns about Charlotte’s illness, she realizes that she needs to give her life a new purpose. Inspired by her gynecologist, who spends her free time caring for neglected children, Fiona takes these children under her wing too and finds fulfilment in doing so. Anne gets into serious trouble when it turns out that “Josh,” who had also acted as though he were very much in love, is now exploiting their affair to blackmail her. He knows that, given her position, she cannot afford a scandal involving a young male escort, and demands 250,000 euros for his silence. In her distress, she turns to her husband for advice. It then emerges that he does not have a younger girlfriend at all: the woman Anne saw with him was their daughter’s friend. Klaus advises her to pay the money. When Anne does, “Josh” is arrested shortly afterwards by two plainclothes officers, a trap Klaus had arranged without her knowledge. The couple reconcile and decide to give their marriage another try.