Berryt Bohlen

In this sequel to Die Bettwurst, Dietmar and Luzi are a somewhat unorthodox couple, who live and fight with tremendous enthusiasm. The unusual nature of their liaison is signalled by the fact that Dietmar is bisexual and is completely unable to remain faithful to Luzi. Dietmar also has his own, personal dialect of German. Luzi, on the other hand, is coziness personified. No matter, in this film they get married at the Memorial Church in Berlin. Infuriated at his playing around, Luzi briefly splits up with him, but when her dog dies of poisoning, he is there to comfort her.

This film is in effect a slideshow of exquisite single photographic images in sparkling black and white, representing Mikesch’s own version of Mary Stuart. “The drama of a woman who attempted a kind of liberal emancipation in a time of upheaval, but got caught in the snares of men,” in her words. Confronted with layers and layers of conflicting information about “how it really was” Mikesch decided not to try to be a historian, but to radicalise the narrative and condense it into striking images of passion, power, love, pain and death.

Daniel, a young man from the provinces come to the city and moves from one gay subculture to the next. His adventures begin on the streets of Berlin, where the shy brunette Daniel meets the blonde Clemens, who invites him home for coffee and offers him a place to stay. Soon Daniel is living with Clemens and believes he has found the love of his life. The two try to imitate a bourgeois marriage and its lifestyle. But after four months of tedium, Daniel is cruised by a rich older man who entices him to move into his villa, where he encounters a group of older gays, pretentious in their appreciations of fine art and classical music, who fawn over him.