Zurück zum Glück (2010)

Ines, a woman in her forties, is dissatisfied with her life. She is married to the unloving Falko, who humiliates and cheats on her. While working as a low-level employee at a home improvement store, her clumsiness causes the death of Hauke, a successful architect who was in the same school class as her. Then a time tunnel sends her back to 1986, where she meets not only her gloomy father, pretending to him that she is an aunt from America, but also her younger self. Since Ines was already involved with Falko at that age, she does everything she can to change the course of her life so she does not end up as the “failure” she later became. On the one hand, she aims to separate her younger self from Falko, who was already fooling around with other girls back then; on the other, she tries to set up her widowed father with the kind neighbor, Mrs. König. She spends a happy night with an eccentric physicist, who shows her the alignment she needs in order to return to the future. She urges the young Hauke, who feels called to become an architect but is prepared, out of a sense of duty, to take over his father’s car repair shop, to follow his true career ambitions. At the same time, she impresses upon him that he must not, under any circumstances, go to the home improvement store on that particular day in the future. When the right alignment occurs, she allows herself to be sent back to the future. Once back in the present, she discovers that she has become a successful businesswoman and that her father is happily living with Mrs. König. She races to the home improvement store to prevent Hauke’s death at the last second—this time, it would have been caused by Falko. Her relationship with Hauke completes her happiness in life.