In the TV comedy "Plötzlich Schwester" (August 6, 8:15 PM, ZDF), two mother-daughter pairs collide. It all begins with a death. Sandra (Klara Lange, born 1998) is in the middle of preparing for her wedding when her father Gerd dies. Shortly afterward, two strangers show up in the garden to settle the inheritance: the brash but warm-hearted Sandy (Cosima Henman, 29) and her esoteric mother Gabi (Anita Vulesica, 52). Gerd had been leading a double life for decades. When Sandra's mother Monika (Andrea Sawatzki, 63) stonewalls them, the two simply move into Gerd's old RV. Sandy makes herself the maid of honor, and soon the venue, wedding dress, and rings are gone. And at the funeral, Gabi secretly reaches into the urn because she wants to keep her great love close to her.
Cursing as Liberation
Sawatzki's Monika enters the film with hateful tirades, the vocabulary is intense. "It was actually a great joy to let loose as Monika and to lose control like that", the actress says in an interview with ZDF. Privately, she holds back now, though it was different in the past. Still, she has a lot of understanding for her character's outburst: "I mean, finding out that your husband simply led a double life and had another family beside me. That's a shock too."
The fight over the deceased's ashes is slapstick in the film, but in real life it's a topic Sawatzki has thought about very carefully. Having an urn in the living room initially goes against her grain. "But I would find it... for me it would be comforting." She's been doing it that way with her deceased dogs for a while now: Three large animals stand in urns at her home, and she talks to them too. "So they hear everything."
Wedding in Snowy Rain
Because "Plötzlich Schwester" builds up to a wedding, Sawatzki also talked about her own. She resisted for five years until her sons with Christian Berkel (68) provided the decisive argument: "If you're not married, you're not real." The wedding took place on December 18, 2011, deliberately in the middle of winter. "Well, then let's just get married in snowy rain, nothing can go wrong then", she had suggested at the time. The plan worked: "Rainy day, snowy rain, wet and cold, awful and all the better for celebrating inside for three days straight. Nobody wanted to go outside anymore, nobody could leave."
She borrowed the wedding dress from a designer friend, white, with a fold-away veil. She dutifully returned it, even though it was hard for her in the end. The wedding anniversary itself, however, she reliably forgets. "My husband always has to remind me when it's our anniversary because I always forget", she admits. Her recipe for a long marriage is accordingly unpretentious: "Oh, don't give up so quickly!"
To Be Continued
Tine Rogoll directed "Plötzlich Schwester" from a screenplay by Svenja Ingwersen. However, it won't remain just this one TV evening: According to ZDF, a sequel has been filming since mid-June, with the working title "Plötzlich Mutter".
