How would my life have turned out if I’d made a different decision at one point or another? This thought has probably crossed everyone’s mind at some time, and Hannelore Elsner as Trudi in CHERRY BLOSSOMS is no exception. Instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a butoh dancer and touring Japan, she decided to stay in provincial Bavaria with her husband, Rudi (Elmar Wepper). Just as Rudi wanted. “He likes it best when nothing ever changes. Nothing. Ever. Nothing at all,” Trudi says of him. She sacrificed her dream to satisfy his creature comforts. But her longing for a different, more exciting, life never went away.

Doris Dörrie is undeniably an expert when it comes to probing the question of missed opportunities. Her episodic film AM I BEAUTIFUL? from 1998 shows her flair for tragedy and absurd comedy when her characters try to break out of a rut and not infrequently fail to do so. There’s Linda (Franka Potente), a hitchhiker who travels across Spain on a lie, pretending to be a deaf-mute. And Klaus (Steffen Wink), who desperately tries to win back his ex-girlfriend Franziska (Anica Dobra). But she marries someone else. And Rita (Iris Berben), who wants to get sex with her husband (Oliver Nägele) over with quickly so she can get to the store before it closes and buy the red cashmere sweater she’s been starving herself into.

am i beautiful? (1998)

Dörrie weaves all these episodes and several others — as in her book of stories, which bears the same title and on which the film is based — into a mosaic of lonely people, scarred by their experiences, who struggle to get their lives in order as they mourn, deal with loss, and search for happiness (that had escaped them). The film alternates nimbly between tragedy and comedy.

AM I BEAUTIFUL? earned Dörrie the Bavarian Film Award for best screenplay in 1998 — one of many awards in her career. She made her feature-film debut with MEN… (1985), an affectionately ironic comedy that pokes fun at all the forms of male vanity, great and small. The film catapulted Dörrie to success and drew more than six million people to the theaters. Heiner Lauterbach and Uwe Ochsenknecht became stars and received the German Film Award for best actor. Dörrie received the award for best screenplay.

In her cinematic work, the literary artist Doris Dörrie shines through again and again. She’s written the screenplays for more than 20 feature films and published just as many literary works, including several collections of short stories. Since 1997, she has headed the Creative Writing Department at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF), which she once attended.

STRAIGHT THROUGH THE HEART (1983)

Dörrie’s literary skill is evident in her films’ unusual premises and the incisive one-liners delivered by her characters. Her first feature film, STRAIGHT TO THE HEART (1983), revealed her talent for finding a clever balance between tragedy and comedy. Twenty-two-year-old Anna Blume receives an enticing offer when a dentist, Dr. Armin Thal, offers her 2,500 marks a month to live in his house rent-free. No further obligations. Above all, no feelings and certainly no relationship. When Anna asks Armin why he thinks she’ll go for the deal, his reply, delivered by Josef Bierbichler in an incomparably laconic way in terse Bavarian humor, is: “Because I assume you’re a pretty lazy creature.”

Dörrie creates a very unusual couple here. Anna in particular is difficult to grasp. She has a mind of her own, dyes her hair blue, and is belligerent. When Armin makes a fuss about her being in an agitated state, she counters pointedly, “It’s not a state. It’s who I am.”

The emancipated willfulness of Dörrie’s female characters is evident in her latest film, THE POOL (2022). At Germany’s only outdoor pool for women, the widest possible range of ideas of womanhood and the female body, recognizable by the women’s respective bathing attire, clash with one another. In this social microcosm, friction is inevitable. With astute humor, Dörrie slices the heated debate about identity politics, tolerance, and equality into its individual parts, without ever downplaying the conflicts and individual standpoints.

Nilam Farooq in the pool

Maria Happel and Andrea Sawatzki in the pool

Lisa Wagner, Nico Stank and Melodie Wakivuamina in the pool

Dörrie is a virtuoso at transcending boundaries, and not just between entertaining and art-house films. She has repeatedly caused a stir with her seven opera productions to date. In 2005, she staged Giuseppe Verdi’s “Rigoletto” at the Bavarian State Opera and set it in a science-fiction realm that was a cross between PLANET OF THE APES, STAR WARS, and KING KONG. The audience at the premiere reacted with lots of applause, but also some booing; today the production has cult status.

As a director and screenwriter, the Hannover native with an unmistakable style is one of Germany’s great auteur filmmakers. She never shies away from grand emotional gestures. When Trudi dies unexpectedly in CHERRY BLOSSOMS, Rudi goes to Japan on his own to take her place in the life she was never able to live. Though gravely ill, he stands on the lakeshore with a bleached face and in his wife’s kimono, dancing butoh in slow, deliberate movements. Right there, in this breathtaking setting, with the snow-capped peak of Mount Fuji in the background, an absolutely sublime moment results — a moment of great happiness that Dörrie allows to last only briefly before it disappears again. A moment that is as fleeting as life itself.