Lovers (1997)

When the Turnau family gathers for dinner, their cheeky, outspoken daughter Kathi is looking forward to playing the lead in her school production. But her father, Jakob, announces that he cannot attend because he has a business engagement in Salzburg involving a lot of money. The next morning, his car will not start. While Lavinia is in town running errands, Jakob pretends at the train station that he is taking a train to Salzburg. When the heel of Lavinia’s shoe breaks and she has it repaired by a station employee, she is surprised to see Jakob leave the station. Lavinia wants to invite her mother, Lydika, who owns an antiquarian bookshop, to the school play. Lydika tells her how troubled she is: she is too old to run the shop, which is in a state of disorder. Lydika first announces that she is going to close it, then reproaches Lavinia for starting a family and not taking care of the business. The older daughter, Therese, drives with her boyfriend to the area around Mistelbach. When he turns out to be a brutal racist, they pick up Lavinia and Kathi there by car. Afterwards, they go to an upscale restaurant and, while eating, spot Jakob at the next table with another woman. This explains his supposed work-related absence. Trying not to be noticed, they pay their bill at once, follow Jakob by car, and see him enter a short-stay hotel with the woman. Lavinia and the girls are shocked. Later, Jakob says on the phone that he is in Salzburg. Lavinia then finds an apartment and secretly moves out of the family home with her daughters. When Jakob returns, he finds the rooms empty and a handwritten note: “See you at the lawyer’s.” But the divorce lawyer does not take Lavinia’s account seriously and points out that divorce is not so simple. Jakob also denies his adultery and says his affair means nothing. Lavinia’s plan now is to get herself ten lovers in return. Lavinia decides to take over and run Lydika’s bookshop. While she and Lydika are having a drink at the wine bar, Lavinia notices Claudio, an Italian, who later offers to help her at the bookshop and suggests a picnic. When Jakob appears outside the shop, she first kisses her “first” lover, then stages a scene involving someone being thrown out. A fight breaks out between Jakob and Claudio outside the wine bar. Later, Lavinia is summoned to the principal of Kathi’s school, who initially calls for Kathi to be dismissed because she made an obscene remark to him. Afterwards, Lavinia takes the principal to a Heuriger. There, she gets him drunk in order to persuade him to let Kathi keep her place at the school, and succeeds. Soon afterwards, an odd customer, Beierlein, comes into the shop and orders Montaigne’s book Badereise. He then invites Lavinia to a vegetarian meal, but it goes badly because of his peculiar behavior. Lavinia also needs a computer, so she has a consultant come to the shop and invites him to dinner at her apartment as well. But her daughters misunderstand the situation, take him for a lover, and chase him away. Before long, both daughters move back in with their father, Jakob, who now constantly pursues Lavinia and urges her to talk to him. She always responds negatively and turns him away. Her next lover is Diego, a gardener who lives in a disused railway carriage. She also orders flowers from him for her rather bare-looking apartment. She sleeps with Diego at first, while Jakob watches them making love from his car. When she visits Diego at the nursery, a younger woman is in the carriage. Therese now wants to know the exact reasons for Jakob’s adultery, but he cannot give her a proper answer. One day, Jakob manages to persuade Lavinia to meet him in a café. He complains that she gave him too little love and tenderness, and that this was why he had an affair with another woman. But Lavinia gets away from him again and seeks out Claudio, the owner of the wine bar, as her new lover. The two eat asparagus risotto, while Jakob and the daughters eat the same thing at the same time. Before Lavinia can sleep with Claudio, Jakob is lying in bed, and Claudio and Jakob get into the same fight as before outside the wine bar. Jakob loses consciousness; Lavinia sends Claudio away and revives Jakob. In the end, Lavinia and Jakob find their way back to each other.