In falschen Händen (2022)

Fashion designer Nika Wagner and Manu, who lives a solitary life, meet by chance at a playground. While Nika is distracted by a work call, her six-year-old son Leon climbs onto the roof of the play structure and is in danger of falling. Manu sees the boy is in trouble and catches him when he can no longer hold on. The two women get talking, and Manu tells Nika that she used to work as a preschool teacher. The next day, when Nika is desperately searching for someone to look after Leon and her eight-month-old daughter Clara, she calls Manu after receiving one refusal after another. Manu spontaneously agrees to watch the children for a few hours. Nika is delighted by how well Leon gets along with Manu and invites the young woman to stay for dinner. When Nika’s husband Tom, who works in logistics, gets home, his wife has already introduced Manu to him as their new babysitter. Over the following weeks, Nika and Tom enjoy the freedom they have thanks to Manu’s help. During a romantic dinner at an elegant restaurant, Nika tells her husband that she wants to return to work full-time earlier than planned. Her boss has already agreed to hire her full-time. Tom is initially skeptical, which leads to an argument, but the evening ultimately ends harmoniously. As Nika and Tom increasingly rely on Manu, the audience already senses that something is wrong with the young woman. In the opening scene, in an underground parking garage, Manu flees from a man who is pursuing her. Later, at a bus stop at night, a woman recognizes her, and Manu pretends to be someone else, saying, “You’re confusing me with someone.” She believes she is being followed; calls on her mobile phone frighten her, and she cries in the shower. Her apartment in a nondescript high-rise is bare and bleak. Because Nika travels a lot for work, Manu increasingly takes on the role of a mother in the family’s daily life. A particularly close bond develops between Leon and Manu, while his sister Clara seems to hold little interest for her. When Nika has to attend an important appointment, Manu eventually accompanies Tom and the children on a short holiday. But that evening, Nika unexpectedly turns up at the castle hotel because her appointment took much less time than expected. Manu suddenly feels surplus to requirements. In tears, she drives home in Nika’s car, only to be intercepted by the man who has been following her. She flees through the underground parking garage and injures her face, but narrowly escapes him. This is the same scene shown at the beginning. Manu takes refuge in the Wagners’ house, for which she now has her own key. She sleeps in the couple’s bed, wears Nika’s nightwear, and rummages through shelves and drawers. She thinks she is safe, but the Wagners catch her when they return from their short trip earlier than planned because Clara has developed a fever. Tom in particular is outraged that Manu has secretly let herself into the family home. Nika, however, takes Manu’s side when she explains that she is fleeing her ex-boyfriend Stephan, who physically assaulted her; Nika even wants to let Manu stay with them. Tom insists that Manu report Stephan to the police. Instead of filing a report, however, Manu leaves the police station straight away. Tom is unhappy that Manu is now going to live with them too, and worries about the children. Nika, on the other hand, cannot imagine abandoning Manu in this situation. Despite Nika standing up for Manu so strongly, Manu manipulates Leon and increasingly turns him against his mother. The situation finally erupts when Manu simply throws away a St. Martin’s lantern Nika made for Leon and makes a different one herself. Nika confronts Manu and is so angered by her snippy reply (“But you’re never here!”) that she throws Manu out and demands the house key back. As Nika searches for new childcare and Tom criticizes her for throwing Manu out so suddenly, Manu suffers in her apartment because she is separated from Leon. Leon misses Manu terribly too. Finally, Manu abducts the boy from the playground and takes him to a lookout tower in the woods. Meanwhile, Nika desperately searches for Leon and suspects that Manu has kidnapped him. In Manu’s apartment, she meets Stephan, who explains that Manu is ill and needs help. He is the father of their son Lukas, who died in an accident six months earlier. He is not a dangerous stalker, but Manu’s worried husband. Meanwhile, in Manu’s mind, the two boys blur into one person, and she can no longer distinguish reality from wishful thinking. She had promised her son Lukas that she would fly a model airplane, but had kept putting it off. Now she climbs the dangerously high tower with Leon to fulfill that promise. Leon becomes frightened, but Manu does not notice. With Stephan’s help, Nika and Tom reach the lookout tower and manage to persuade Manu to let Leon go. Stephan asks Manu to come back to him. The film’s final shot shows the model airplane gliding through the air. Stephan and Manu watch it go.