I've known this film for many, many years, and it's high on my list of favorites to return to and enjoy again. First, let me warn you that there's a truly disappointing American remake of it, in English, known as "Babycakes," but, unlike this travesty of the original film, I'd say the single adjective which characterizes it for me is "ADULT." The humor--for the first half of the film is hilariously funny--is very grown-up humor; and the actual love story which it becomes, with its tensions and tendernesses, is also very, very mature--I think it quite likely that the movie will only appeal to people who are at least 35, but that they will find considerable truth in the way lust, infatuation, and, eventually, tenderness and caring love--and loss--are portrayed.
The protagonist is a fat, middle-aged, old-maid spinster, who works as a mortician in Munich and, one day, unexpectedly mesmerized by the gentle voice of a youthful, handsome, athletic driver of the Munich U-Bahn (subway, metro), rushes to see the owner of the lovely voice, and becomes obsessed and infatuated with him. The first half of the film tells us the hilarious adventures and desperate measures she goes through to identify him, stalk him, and, ultimately, snare him and seduce him.
*SPOILERS FOLLOW* It is here that the film turns from a trivial farce into a film of depth and true interest; a relation that started as an infatuation driven, on her side by lust and a desire for life and youth in her colorless and depressing life, and, on his side, by a nagging and unpleasant wife who drives him into the arms of a love-affair--this relation CHANGES into one of true affection, caring and tenderness, and the two, who were lusting for one another's surface qualities, slowly discover the real human beings underneath the flesh--and discover that there is more than simply lust and "fun" in their relationship.
The film moves toward a deliberately ambiguous ending that raises questions--many of them--and leaves us haunted by the lives of the two main characters, and their experience.
There are two moments of sexually explicit activity in the film, for people who are touchy about such things, but none of it seems gratuitous "sex for the sake of sex scene" and such scenes are conducted within the bounds of taste, good (not smutty) humor, and leave us with a sense of INTIMACY rather than PORNOGRAPHY.
The real adult nature of the film is in the departure from any sort of expected scenario: like Hitchcock's "Psycho" it is a film which starts off going decidedly in ONE direction, and then takes a sudden, and wonderful turn into a totally unexpected and different direction--we stop laughing, and we start identifying, strongly, and at times, painfully, with the main characters and their brief taste of an escape from their respective lonelinesses.
Can't recommend it highly enough--it's a big favorite of mine.
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