Mutter muss weg (2012)

Tristan is the son of a former porn actress who now publishes erotic books. His mother, Hannelore, is the dominant force in the life of the unemployed dreamer. In therapy sessions, Tristan lays all his fears bare, but repeatedly has to listen to how much of a disappointment he is to his mother. Tristan needs start-up capital for a business idea. His mother has the money he needs, but refuses to give it to him. When he meets the contract killer Josip in a bar, he believes he can finally solve his problems. Together with Josip, Tristan breaks into his mother’s home wearing masks, but Josip botches the job, and Hannelore survives the attack. Tristan feels guilty and cancels the murder contract with Josip. By then, however, Josip has passed the job on and cannot simply call it off. To avoid another attempt on Hannelore’s life, Tristan goes with his mother to an upmarket spa hotel. He tries to protect her and, in his paranoia, suspects that every guest is the hired killer. During their stay, Tristan and Anita, a hotel employee, grow closer, and they spend a night together. Over time, Tristan realizes that he has to break away from his mother to get his problems under control. He leaves the hotel in a hurry. Just before leaving, he learns that Anita has only recently started working at the hotel and lied on her résumé. Tristan believes he has found the woman hired to kill his mother and wants to cancel the contract. But then he discovers that Anita was hired by his mother to kill him. She paralyzes him with a drug and tries to suffocate him with a mask. Josip then appears, shoots Anita, and saves Tristan. During another attempt to kill Hannelore, Josip is shot by her. Still partly paralyzed, Tristan flees from his mother. In a scuffle, they both fall from a balcony and are impaled on an iron bar, suffering fatal injuries. In a final scene, Tristan is back with his therapist, and it turns out that the whole story about his mother’s murder and the fatal outcome was only his fantasy. His therapist, Dr. Korff, encourages him, however, saying that she can solve his problems. Clearly cheered up, as he leaves the office Tristan approaches the receptionist, who played the contract killer Anita in his fantasy, and asks whether she might like to go out with him sometime. She neither accepts nor rejects his invitation. As Tristan walks through the streets in an almost cheerful mood, we hear his therapist on the phone with his mother, telling her that his fantasies about killing are becoming increasingly concrete and asking whether they should perhaps have him committed. The two women agree to keep an eye on him for the time being.