Ihr mich auch (2010)

Hannah Herzog enjoys her work as a fashion and design manager. Since her husband’s death, she has lived alone in a spacious condominium. She gets along particularly well with her neighbor Jonathan Engelhard, an editor at a publishing house specializing in popular fiction. He frequently changes his young girlfriends, but he shares Hannah’s sense of humor, so they often sit together and laugh their problems away. Hannah’s relationship with Matthias Schröder, the head of human resources at the Waldorf fashion house, is less than ideal: he is married and still lives under the same roof as his wife. Hannah nevertheless takes it in stride. Her relationship with her adult daughter Astrid is more troubling. Although Astrid graduated from law school summa cum laude, she has grown increasingly distant from her mother since marrying a very rich man. Hannah also disapproves of the way Astrid is raising her granddaughter Elena, as she thinks Astrid is overdoing the early-development activities for the barely two-year-old child. Then everything goes badly for Hannah. Instead of promoting her to managing director, as Günther Waldorf, the head of the fashion house, had promised, he puts his arrogant nephew Peter Arnold in the position ahead of her. Arnold, a dynamic young business graduate, first curtails Hannah’s responsibilities, then discredits her work and spreads rumors to her disadvantage. Schröder is no help either, preferring to stay out of everything. Only Engelhard listens to Hannah and encourages her. One night, Jenny Clemens, Hannah’s former personal assistant, who was poached by Arnold, turns up at her door. Jenny has since realized that Arnold used her merely as a means to an end: to obtain information about Hannah that he could then use against her. Jenny believes something is seriously wrong in Milan, where the company has its clothes made, and offers to get to the bottom of it with Hannah. Hannah flies to Milan and visits the workshop where Arnold has recently started having the clothes made, though the quality there leaves a lot to be desired. Hannah discovers that in Milan they are merely sewing the company label into garments made in India by children and very young women. This is particularly serious because, in the coming days, the company is due to receive an award for fair competition and cooperation between older and younger employees. Against her daughter’s advice to accept the large severance package Arnold offered her if she withdrew, Hannah decides to speak with the company’s head, Günther Waldorf. After learning all the facts, Waldorf decides that from now on his nephew will be responsible only for the company’s finances. He puts production and its operations in the hands of the new managing director, Hannah Herzog. Hannah also makes a decision in her private life: she ends her relationship with Matthias Schröder, while she and Jonathan Engelhard grow closer.