Sechzehneichen (2012)

At the beginning of the film, the family man Nils Eichhorn is questioned in what appears to be an interrogation and says that he loves his wife and daughter more than anything. When the unknown questioner asks where the two of them are, he answers, “I don’t know.” As the film goes on, further scenes from the interrogation are shown, explaining background details such as Nils’s wife’s former work as a photographer and the award she did not receive at a ceremony. The wealthy Eichhorn family are on their way to view a house in the gated residential community of Sechzehneichen. Because Laura has developed an allergy in the big city and, according to Nils, the people there are selfish—they did not help Laura when she fell to the ground during an attack—he wants to move his family to the countryside. The community has 20 detached houses in various architectural styles, and the Eichhorns are supposed to view the newest one. During a tour in the community’s own minibus, the realtor Konstantin Wendisch asks Nils whether he is interested in politics and tells him that the municipality has a representative in the state parliament. The Eichhorns move in and are immediately welcomed by the other residents: their neighbor Ludwig arranges a welcome party for them at his neighbors Ansgar and Marlene’s home. Laura and Nils initially wonder why he is doing this without asking Ansgar and Marlene first. Ludwig reassures the couple that his neighbors will be glad to host them. The residents of Sechzehneichen send the Eichhorns a framed picture, “The Dream of Bathing in the Fountain of Youth” by Lucas Cranach the Elder, as a welcome gift. One day, after shopping, Laura accidentally bumps into the shopping cart of Tim, a teenager from the community. She then drives him home and arranges to play tennis with him. At the welcome party, Nils and Laura meet Ansgar, Marlene, and Valerie, the realtor Konstantin’s wife. Laura talks politely with everyone and looks around the house. On a living-room wall, she notices the same painting that she and her husband received as a gift. As the evening goes on, Marlene and Valerie talk about their health problems and the doctor, Dr. Ludwig Lindenfels, who prescribes each of his patients an individual medication. It consists of homeopathic globules (“little balls”) and is entirely plant-based. Laura asks about another picture in the house, showing the city of Nuremberg, and asks what Marlene’s connection to it is. Marlene starts to cry because she has no answer to the question, and hurries away. Meanwhile, Nils sits with the other husbands in a library, smoking cigars beside a burning fireplace. They tell Nils about an interesting documentary on ARTE at quarter to one, about the early 1960s. At home, Laura shares her impressions of the party and its guests, but Nils does not understand her and dismisses everything as superficiality and coincidence. Later, alone in front of the television, Nils notices that a different film is being shown instead of the ARTE program. It shows at least three men sexually assaulting Marlene as she looks directly into the camera. The next day, Valerie’s young deaf son Simon goes missing. Along with his speech therapist, Marlene asks Laura to help them search in the pouring rain. The security service finds the boy’s bicycle, and Marlene bursts into tears at the sight of it; Laura and the speech therapist continue searching alone. They find a hole in the fence, and then Simon on a playground outside the grounds, where he has taken shelter from the rain with two other children. When the speech therapist asks him to come out, he shakes his head. Nils is angry because Laura left their daughter alone, and decides to go by himself to the meeting called by the community because Simon has gone missing. There, he criticizes the security service’s negligence and receives prolonged, enthusiastic applause for suggesting that they hire a different company. After Ludwig drives him home, Nils asks what was going on with the pornographic film that had apparently been sent to his television. Ludwig pretends not to know anything about it, then drives on to an event at the “Men’s Club” after receiving a phone call. At home, Nils flips through the channels and sees another film that has been sent to his television. In it, Ludwig, Konstantin, and Ansgar are apparently performing breast augmentation on Valerie in an operating room. Later in the film, Tim tells Laura at tennis about a recurring nightmare. In it, he rides his bicycle through Sechzehneichen, while the bodies of all the other residents lie around him and he is the only one still alive. After being invited to speak with Ludwig, the doctor, Nils goes to the community clinic and encounters a woman with a scarf over her mouth in the waiting room. She flirts with him using her eyes and gives him a business card. It reads, “Clarissa Fenn, Sechszehneichen 23.” She goes into the examination room, after which Nils is told that the doctor cannot see him because of complications. At home, Laura realizes that her husband is distancing himself from her and, believing it is her fault, promises to change. Nils does not want to go to bed with her because he is still expecting a phone call. After the call, he drives to a video-surveilled ice rink, where he is confronted by the woman from the waiting room. On the ice, illuminated only in the center, Nils becomes intimate with her. Suddenly, applause rings out from the shadows around them. The men of the community are there, and they now demand that Nils make a decision: if he wants to “belong,” he must make his wife compliant. Nils replies that he loves his wife, and later tries to sleep with Laura. She wordlessly pushes him away, convinced that he has slept with another woman. Laura’s sister Ella suddenly arrives for a day, and the two talk about the past. The next day, Nils lures Ella into an ambush at the community hall, where she encounters Ludwig, Konstantin, and Ansgar. Everything suggests that Ella is to be “made compliant.” At home, Nils makes almost all of Ella’s belongings disappear, but Laura grows suspicious when she cannot reach her sister and finds some of her personal effects. Just as she begins to accuse Nils, the phone rings. It is Ella, speaking in a very dazed voice—apparently under the influence of drugs—telling Laura that she has met a “real hunk” and could not say goodbye. She is sorry, she says, but has to hang up now. In a panic, Laura believes her sister and, completely distraught after the call, apologizes to the understanding, deeply subdued Nils. Laura has taken portraits of the residents of Sechzehneichen and exhibits them in the community hall. There she also meets Tim, who tells her that the others want to kill her. While her husband gives a welcoming speech for Laura, her sister appears, staggering in a black evening dress and a red feather jacket. She cuddles up to Ludwig and kisses him suggestively. The photo exhibition begins, and Laura grows increasingly nervous. In the crowd, Laura hears remarks such as, “Unbelievable. That’s supposed to be art?”, “This can’t be true,” “Arrogant cow,” and “Who does he think he is? The nerve.” She takes Nils’s hand, but after a short time he lets go. Laura realizes that no one is actually interested in the pictures, and feels even more humiliated when everyone applauds. The high point of the evening is the presentation of the prize: a rare 1863 daguerreotype depicting the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, precisely the award Laura was denied when she was an active photographer. The guests, gathered around the stage, surround her, and she faints; she comes to in a medical ward. There, Nils and Ludwig want to give her a medication to “calm her down.” Laura jumps off the operating table and flees the room. After hiding for a while, Laura returns to her house to get her daughter, whom Ella is looking after. Nils hears screams and locks the door to prevent Laura from escaping. During the ensuing argument, Nils knocks Laura to the floor and drags her down the stairs. She wakes up, kicks him down, and, after fighting him in the kitchen, flees upstairs onto the flat roof. There, she threatens Nils with a knife and tells him not to come any closer. He forces her off the roof, and she falls. Meanwhile, Tim appears outside the house and calls emergency services on his mobile phone. The interrogation room is shown again, with Nils sitting there after finishing his statement. Behind a pane of glass, a prosecutor stands beside Laura and reassures her. She asks what will happen to Nils and tells him that Nils tried to kill her. The prosecutor presses his business card into her hand and says that her husband “won’t be getting out of here anytime soon.” Laura wants to see her daughter, and the prosecutor accompanies her to the elevator. There, Laura notices the prosecutor’s surname on the business card: “Wendisch”—he appears to be related to the realtor, Konstantin Wendisch. She realizes that he, too, is part of the conspiracy. When they arrive at the underground parking garage, the community’s black minivan, bearing the Sechzehneichen logo, is waiting there. When its door opens, Fanny is visible, strapped into a seat. Laura gets into the vehicle, and they drive away. In the final scene, Laura, dressed elegantly, walks through the community gate with her daughter as Nils comes toward them. Laura has apparently been drugged into submission. They all walk hand in hand, “happily,” toward the Sechzehneichen community as the barriers close behind them. What has happened to Laura remains unresolved.