A morbidly obese unemployed hairdresser in Eastern Berlin is sent by Social Services for a job interview in a Hair Salon in a Shopping Mall which she fails to get the job as she is not ‘asthetically pleasing’ ….. the Owners actually words were “what we sell is beauty, and you’re not beautiful, my dear”. Hard words, but very true. Kathi exaggerates her enormous size wearing the most bizarre array of clothes topped off with chunky wooden fruit jewellery. It aint pretty.Anyway, taking umbrage she locates an empty store next to the Salon and vows to set up on her own. No small task for a woman with no money or any business acumen, and when the State and the Bank won’t cough up the capital, she resorts to helping smuggle Vietnamese illegal immigrants into the country. Oh yes, her skinny sulky daughter who lives with her in their high rise tiny apartment suddenly stops hating her which makes no sense at all. But then again very little did in this dreadfully unfunny movie that Netflix had suggested this as a comedy I would like!
Maybe you had needed to have been used to a miserable life in the old Communist East Germany under the Stasi to appreciate this humorless piece.? Discovering that it was directed by Doris Dörrie a highly awarded German filmmaker who cut her teeth directing Opera, adds resonance to the review I have just read (belatedly) in ‘The Hollywood Reporter’ who aptly noted that even when The Fat Lady Sang, very sadly it still wasn’t over!
Unless you have an overwhelming desire to see a very very large woman get naked way too often …. and even have sex with a skinny Vietnamese guy ….. and trust me, you won’t …… then you won’t need to sit through this, as I did that for you!!!!
