Schöne Männer hat man nie für sich allein (2004)

Annabelle works in the classified-ad department of a daily newspaper. She has just turned 30 and thinks it’s about time she fell in love. Her friends persuade her to go on a date, but despite trying, she can’t bear it and simply leaves the young man sitting there. The constant exposure to personal ads in the newspaper gets to Annabelle. One day, when she takes an ad from Daniel, a young dentist, she falls truly in love for the first time in her life. She immediately sets out to win the dentist’s favor and tries everything she can to get his attention. On her friends’ advice, Annabelle secretly makes the replies to the ad—which arrive at the agency under a coded address—disappear. Then she meets Daniel “by chance” in the sauna, and he seems to take a bit of a liking to her. But to keep him from meeting someone through the ad and improve her own chances, she continues destroying all the replies. So that he won’t become suspicious, her friends suggest that Daniel should perhaps have a few bad experiences to put him off meeting someone through a personal ad. The plan doesn’t really work, because all three friends are instantly “swept off their feet” the first time they meet the charming Daniel. It also turns out that he isn’t interested in a serious relationship at all. He placed the ad for his friend Gernot, who has been pining for a lost love for years—a situation Daniel can no longer bear to watch. Annabelle is understandably disappointed, but agrees to be introduced to Gernot as a potential girlfriend, just so she can stay in touch with Daniel. But Annabelle and Gernot are completely unsuited to each other: he thinks she is a “boorish shrew,” and she thinks he is an “eccentric oddball.” Annabelle tries a direct approach to win Daniel over. Although he finds her increasingly intriguing, he doesn’t want to take her away from his friend. Besides, until now he has been an incorrigible charmer, always rushing from one romantic adventure to the next. Now he can’t get Annabelle out of his mind. But after a falling-out between them, he wants nothing more to do with her. In his distress, he plans to undergo an Indigenous ritual with his friend Gernot that is supposed to cure him once and for all of his desire for women. Annabelle finds out and ultimately manages to stop him. Daniel can’t help but take her in his arms.