Agnes and His Brothers (German: Agnes und seine Brüder) is a 2004 German dramedy directed by Oskar Roehler. It stars Martin Weiß, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Katja Riemann and Tom Schilling.
The story concerns the three very different Tschirner siblings: Hans-Jörg (Bleibtreu), who is a librarian and sex addict; Werner (Knaup), who is a politician in a troubled marriage with Signe (Riemann) and has a son, Ralf (Schilling) who despises him and enjoys humiliating him; and Martin (Weiß), who is now called Agnes after having a gender-reassignment operation. Agnes works as a dancer and is suffering from unrequited love. Together, they regularly visit their father, Günther. All three have different feelings for him — Agnes loves him, Werner sees him as a burden and Hans-Jörg flat out hates him.
Agnes and His Brothers provides examples of:
- Auto Erotica: Happens between Werner and Signe, though not really played for fanservice. Signe has enough of Werner and wants to leave him once and for all. She gets in her car, and so does Werner. He then asks her just one thing before she leaves, and that's fucking her one last time. Surprisingly, she agrees, and they do it in the car. It takes them about 25-30 seconds. Then Signe leaves.
- Awful Wedded Life: Werner and Signe can't stand each other anymore.
- Bathos: Very dramatic things happen in this movie, and most of them are featured through absurd humor.
- Big Brother Instinct: Hans-Jörg mistakenly thinks that their father has always sexually abused Martin and caused the latter's gender change into Agnes. It leads him to take a hunting shotgun and kill his father.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Tschirner family is epically screwed up.
- Broken Bird: Life's a hell for poor Agnes.
- The Cameo: Til Schweiger plays the hot library girl's boyfriend.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Hans-Jörg. All. The. Freaking. Time.
- Exiled to the Couch: Signe forces Werner to sleep on the couch as their marriage goes downhill.
- Expy: Werner's storyline borrows heavily from Gary in Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections:
- The son spies on his father with video cameras that he has set up all over the house.
- The relationship with his wife has almost turned to hatred with his wife thinking of him as a loser.
- The wife bonds with the son on his "hobby" of spying thus stripping Werner of all authority.
- Extreme Libido: Hans-Jörg and his filthy Peeping Tom habit. Oh boy. The solution he finds to quench it? Becoming a porn actor.
- Incest Subtext: 22-yeard old Ralf helping his mother Signe to apply sunscreen on her body. Yeah. Although it could be just yet another prank of Ralf to piss Werner off.
- Leitmotif: A song plays every time Hans-Jörg is Distracted by the Sexy (and it happens a lot).
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Hans-Jörg is a sexually frustrated pervert who masturbates in his library's toilets while peeping on the ladies.
- Nice Guy: Agnes is the nicest of the three siblings by far, with Werner being obnoxious to his wife and Hans-Jörg being a pervert.
- Not What It Looks Like: Hans-Jörg thinks Günther is sexually abusing Agnes by watching them from a distance outside Günther's home, while it's not what's actually happening.
- Patricide: Hans-Jörg takes a hunting shotgun and kills his father.
- The Peeping Tom: Hans-Jörg is an incurable pervert who enjoys peeping on the ladies' toilets at the library (and masturbates while he's at it).
- The Prankster: Ralf hates his father Werner, and never misses an occasion to humiliate him with pranks, most of the time by filming him in embarrassing situations.
- Trans Tribulations: Agnes is transgender, and suffers the most out of the three siblings from an economic and affective standpoint.
