Sylvia Berger, heir apparent to a major family business based in the FRG’s former capital Bonn, first makes a mess of her studies and then catches a disease from a rent boy she fucked to win a bet. Disowned by her parents, she falls in love with one Casper Milquetoast, who soon enough gets hooked on drugs; pretty soon, Sylvia is selling her fine body for small change. But when some sinister relatives plot a takeover of ‘her’ company, Sylvia gets creative – with quite a bit of help from all the men who, in one way or another, had something to do with her downfall.
The last part of a loose trilogy of pulp melodramas Graf made around the turn of the millennium, this is the most abstract and obviously subversive of the three. Imagine Douglas Sirk and Alfred Vohrer joining forces to help Jean-Marie Straub adapt a particularly outrageous Rosamunde Pilcher rip-off, and you get some idea of the sheer weirdness you’re in for.
Film details
- Country of production
- Germany
- Year
- 2004
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2013
- Length
- 89'
- Medium/Format
- Betacam Digi
