Stille Nächte (2014)

To please his parents, Georg travels with his now-divorced wife, Rita, to his hometown in northern Germany for a Christmas visit. He lives in Cologne and works at a clinic there, but he cannot bring himself to tell his parents that he and Rita have not been married for several years. With a great deal of persuasion, he repeatedly gets Rita, who lives in Berlin, to play along with this charade. The holidays always pass without Georg coming clean to his parents, which infuriates Rita every time. Nevertheless, she keeps quiet because she believes it is Georg’s responsibility to set the record straight, not hers. And it is not just their supposedly happy marriage that is in question, but also his professional life. Because he does not want to look like a failure, he has claimed to be a doctor—by now even a senior physician. In fact, he is “only” a nurse, something he has kept from his wife all these years as well. But Rita is not entirely honest either, because neither her hair salon nor her love life is going as smoothly as she pretends. So the same pattern repeats every year. Although Rita urges him to tell his parents the truth this time, Georg cannot bring himself to do it. The family ritual on Christmas Eve, with potato salad, a game of skat, and a visit to midnight Mass together, is firmly entrenched. On the way home, Rita always insists that this really will be “the last time” for her. Neither of them suspects that this year will truly be their last Christmas together. A few months later, Georg receives news that his parents have died. They took their own lives together, because they too had their secrets. Clara and Paul had long since seen through their son, but they had never admitted how ill Clara was. When she could no longer bear her pain, and her husband did not want to be left alone, the couple set off on their final journey. In an affectionate farewell letter, they explain their reasons to Georg and let him know that they are convinced he and Rita belong together. Though it does not seem so at first, their wish comes true, as Georg and Rita find their way back to each other in this extraordinary situation.