Jahr des Drachen (2012)

Thomas Eichner, in his late forties and a partner in a Cologne textile company, is in the Vietnamese metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City on behalf of his firm to negotiate a joint venture with a Vietnamese company. At a business dinner one evening, he meets Huong, a prostitute, and takes a liking to her. Back in Germany, his wife Maren, who has had cancer for eight years, tells him that it has spread to her bones and that she needs expensive specialist treatment. Back in Vietnam to sign the contract, he seeks Huong’s company, and she takes him to her home village. They fall in love, and Huong repeatedly asks about marriage, but Thomas evades the question. Back in Germany again, he gets a call from Huong: she has followed him there. Thomas puts Huong up in an apartment and spends his free time with her while Maren is undergoing medical treatment. One day, on an outing, the two unexpectedly run into Thomas’s grown son, Daniel. Tension hangs between them, and Thomas speeds off with Huong. Drunk with love, he tells his business partner, Lars Behlke, that he intends to sell his stake in the company and marry Huong. By now, Daniel has tracked down Huong’s whereabouts through Vietnamese people living in Cologne. He visits her and wants to take her to the airport so she will return to Vietnam and disappear from their lives. As he reverses his car from the courtyard onto the road, a small van rams it on the passenger side. Huong suffers fatal injuries in the accident. Clearly shaken, Thomas accompanies Huong’s coffin back to her home village. There, he gives Huong’s mother an envelope of money that her daughter had saved for her, so she could undergo a necessary operation. The film ends with Thomas meeting Huong’s young daughter, whom he had known nothing about, while his wife calls him in Vietnam and tells him she would agree to a divorce.