"I had a dream. We were together in my dream. We were brother and sister, father and mother, wife and husband. And both of us were both."
A 2000 German drama written and directed by Tom Tykwer that has a nurse (Franka Potente) falling for a man (Benno Furmann) after he saves her life and she tries to track him down.
The movie also stars Joachim Krol, Lars Rudolph, Melchior Beslon, Ludger Pistor, and Natja Brunckhorst.
It was released On September 2, 2000.
Tropes for the film:
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: For Bodo, saving Sissi's life was just one of the many things he did that day. Or at least he tries to pretend it was nothing for him.
- Bystander Syndrome: Everyone is just standing around the truck, with Sissi underneath it. While they might call the ambulance already and nobody willing to touch her in fear of doing some extra damage (given she was literally run over by a truck), she is suffocating down there and there is nobody checking on her.
- The Caper: Bodo and Walter are planning a robbery at the bank, where Walter works as a guard.
- Coincidental Broadcast: As Bodo stumbles into the mental ward, the TV in the recreation room is playing news about his brother, Walter, dying from the gunshot wound he received earlier. Bodo is sent into an aggressive frenzy, trashing the TV set, and unintentionally gets himself admitted, but at least he dodges the police.
- Contrived Coincidence: It wouldn't be a Tom Tykwer movie without a hefty dose of those. In fact, characters in-universe eventually do catch up on the crazy amount of improbable coincidences. To wit: the apparently inconsequential funeral in the opening that Bodo attended as a grave digger turned out to be that of Sissi's distant relative, the bank the heirloom locket is kept in is the same one Bodo and Walter try to rob, and Sissi shows up there as they are performing their caper. And take a wild guess which gas station they reach during the finale.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Both of the main characters. And in both cases, it's far more complicated than the initial exposition:
- Bodo was married once. Sissi is told by Walter about a gas station accident that led to the wife's death, leaving Bodo in endless grief as he was in the toilet during the event.
- Sissi is a child of two patients in the very mental ward she works in. Or at least that's what she's been told.
- Deadly Bath: The trope is played straight in a flashback when a mental ward patient throws a hair dryer into a bathtub used by Sissi's mother. Later, Bodo, hiding from the law in the same mental institution, is relaxing after a botched heist in the same bathtub, and the same patient, Steini, (believing Sissi has fallen for him) throws a toaster at him. He instinctively catches it, and both stare in shock at each other for a moment before Bodo leaps up with murder in his eyes.
- Driven to Suicide: After having one fight too many, Bodo's wife decided to kill herself in a random bout, setting the gas station they were in on fire.
- Florence Nightingale Effect:
- One scene has Sissi, a nurse at a psychiatric hospital, masturbating one of her patients during the night shift. The scene is rather squick-inducing when the viewer discovers the patient is her father.
- Inverted with Sissi herself, as she falls for the man that saved her life.
- From Camouflage to Criminal: Bodo is a former soldier who is now a petty thief, but is also planning a big, elaborate bank job with his brother.
- Go Among Mad People: Bodo temporarily hides in the mental ward Sissi works in after the heist goes sideways.
- Go Through Me: Sissi stands between a bank guard and Bodo during the heist.
- Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy: This is how the protagonists meet - Bodo, after inadvertently causing Sissi to be hit by a truck, performs an emergency tracheomtomy note on her and disappears before Sissi can learn his name. As a result, she becomes obsessed with tracking him down.
- Instant Sedation: Subverted. During the heist, the two couriers carrying the money cases are sedated using chloroform, but this being chloroform one of them wakes up quickly and the whole thing starts to fall apart.
- The Lost Lenore: Bodo had a wife. He never really got over her death, blaming himself.
- Mind Screw: The ending. After visiting the same gas station where Bodo's wife died, there are two Bodos in the scene: the one who came there with Sissi and the Bodo that "had to finally leave the toilet", finally getting over his wife's death. Except there are literally two of them, and they take turns as drivers until the one taken from the station is left in a rural nowhere. Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
- The Mole: Walter is on the robbery, but just happens to work in the bank for an unspecified amount of time prior (implied to be at least months).
- Never Suicide: Sissi's mother didn't kill herself, nor was she a patient prior. She was a nurse working in that place and was murdered by Sissi's father.
- Non-Indicative Name: The movie is about a modern-day nurse and a former soldier turned thief. It makes more sense in German anyway, given Simone goes on regular basis as Sissi
. - Rescue Romance: Sissi is knocked down by a truck and has her life saved with a tracheotomy done by ex-soldier turned criminal Bodo Reimer. She becomes obsessed with tracking him down, convinced that they are destined to be together.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: We get a few brief glimpses through Steini's perspective at his attempt at killing Bodo.
- Would Hit a Girl: One of the patients at the mental ward punches Sissi out of the blue, throwing her on the ground. It is revealed he had situations like that and he is actually asking to be self-restrained to not make his behaviour worse.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Bodo successfully talks the money courier out of shooting him. Not in a game of chicken, but simply by appealing to his conscience and the fact that he will then have to spend the rest of his life with the fact that he shot another man.
