Corinna Harfouch Movies

A family reunion turns into a long series of disasters in this comedy from Germany. Iris (Corinna Harfouch) is a middle-aged woman who looks after horses at a stable and lives with her mother, Silvia (Christine Schorn). Silvia divorced her husband years ago, and she passes the time by working with a community theater troupe and drinking heavily; Iris has to handle nearly all the household responsibilities thanks to her mom's alcoholism, and often wonders if she'll ever have a life of her own. With Silvia's birthday coming up, the family begins coming together to celebrate the occasion -- Silvia's youngest daughter, Marianne (Kirsten Block), already lives nearby with her out-of-work husband, Martin (Robert Gallinowski), and their teenage son, and Anne (Dagmar Manzel), the middle daughter in the household, makes a rare appearance after leaving the country to pursue a career in music. Silvia's ex-husband (Otto Mellies) even comes to the party, bringing along his current girlfriend (Simone Kabst), who is young and pretty but suffers from a medical condition that prevents her from staying awake. As the relations gather for the birthday party, Iris struggles to keep her mother sober, prevent Anne and Martin from reigniting their long-dormant affair, wake up her father's date, and try to impress a man she hopes might be interested in her. Frei Nach Plan (aka According to Plan) was the first commercial feature from director Franziska Meletzky. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An obsessive French perfumer with a highly developed olfactory sense and an all-consuming drive to capture the essence of love eventually resorts to murder in his unrepentant quest to find the key ingredient for his recipe in director Tom Tykwer's adaptation of author Patrick Suskind's best-selling 1985 novel. Born in a fetid fish market and raised in a dilapidated orphanage, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) toiled his childhood away in a rank tannery run by the thuggish Grimal (Sam Douglas). Subsequently obsessed by smell, Grenouille's keen olfactory sense becomes so finely tuned that it eventually overpowers such human qualities as love and compassion. Though he has indeed discovered the unmistakable scent of a woman, Grenouille finds it impossible to connect with the fairer sex on any sort of meaningful level. Roaming the streets of Paris late one night, Grenouille catches the scent of a young girl selling plums and impulsively strangles her, later sniffing her nude corpse in a twisted attempt to preserve the distinctive scent in his memory. After persuading legendary perfumer Giuseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman) to take him on as an apprentice, Grenouille travels to the town of Grasse in Southern France in order to learn the art of enfleurage at a firm run by the highly respected Mme. Arnulfi (Corinna Harfouch). It is there that Grenouille becomes dangerously drawn to the vestal aroma of the young and beautiful Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood), the daughter of widower merchant Antione Richis (Alan Rickman). Soon driven to madness by such a pure scent, the spellbound Grenouille continues to claim the lives of the numerous young girls in a tragic attempt to bottle the impossibly elusive smell of virginal womanhood. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Turkish-born filmmaker Zuli Aladag explores the simmering racial and socioeconomic tensions of the German middle class with this urgent thriller centering on the escalating conflict between an intellectual professor and a drug dealing teen. Simon (August Zirner) is a highly respected professor whose son Felix (Robert Holler) is being harassed by a vicious Turkish street thug named Can (Oktay Ozdemir). When Simon sets out to confront his son's tormentor, it soon becomes obvious that the situation will not be resolved with words. Now, as everyone involved becomes consumed by their own uncontrollable rage, a simply bullying incident rapidly spirals into something much more malevolent. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

German director Pago Balke's Verrückt Nach Paris (Crazy About Paris) tells the tale of mentally and physically handicapped people, and employed performers who confront these same challenges in real life. Tired of poor care, typified by the behavior of Enno (Dominique Horwitz), Hilde (Paula Kleine), Philip (Frank Grabski), and Karl (Wolfgang Goettsch) escape from the institution where they reside. As they taste independence on the outside, Enno changes his behavior after falling in love. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Two teenagers find themselves growing up a bit faster than they expected in this drama from Germany. Katja (Tatjana Trieb) and Johann (Robert Gwisdek) are two best friends in their early teens who both dream of the world they will live in as adults. However, Johnann discovers he has leukemia, which puts his life in jeopardy and cuts Katja off from her closest companion. Things are not much easier for her at home; Katja's mother (Martina Gedeck) has been having an affair with Johann's father (eino Ferch), and isn't sure if she should stay with her husband or move on. The theatrical-feature debut of television director Anno Saul, Gruene Wueste was well received in its screening at the 1999 Munich Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A burnt-out Berlin cop investigating his 652nd case slowly loses the ability to discern the differences between the grim realities of the job and a decaying personal life as his mental instability grows progressively worse. His latest case is particularly nasty and puzzling, but Detective Bernie Kominka (Gotz George) finds himself strangely pleased, for it distracts him from his tumultuous home life wherein his wife grows fussy and distant, and his nearly lunatic son proclaims his undying hatred for him. The mystery involves the apparently sexually-motivated mutilation, beating death, and robbery of a young man. During his initial investigation of the crime scene, Kominka notes a yellow umbrella that is surreptitiously picked up by a young woman. While vainly searching for clues, Kominka's marriage finally crumbles, but not before he is suspended by his boss/brother-in-law Hecht (Christian Redl) during a heated argument. With no work and no family, Kominka, who seems to be teetering on the brink of a breakdown without realizing it himself, starts looking for the woman and the missing umbrella. During his search, he learns that the victim's ex-wife has become a suspect and that the deceased had been selling his son to pedophiles. Kominka finds the woman, Anna Weller (Corinna Harfouch) soon enough. A recent divorcée, she is as vulnerable and fragile as he is. Without identifying himself as a cop, Kominka picks Anna up at a singles bar and the two embark upon a decidedly sexual and unhealthy relationship that only worsens the situation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

What's so funny about a kidnapping? More than you might expect in Bis Zum Horizont Und Weiter/To The Horizon And Beyond, an offbeat comedy from Germany. When Katja (Nina Petri), a petty criminal with a record, is sentenced to another stretch behind bars, her boyfriend Henning (Wolfgang Stumph) decides something needs to be done, so he kidnaps Beate (Corinna Harfouch), the judge who handed down the sentence. Until a ransom can be arranged, Henning hides Beate at a ramshakle house on the outskirts of town where his mother Emmi (Gudrun Okras) lives. However, it turns out Katja has already escaped from custody and is planning on hiding out at Emmi's place; not only are the cops looking for her, but so is her lawyer. Before long, unexpected frendships and unusual alliances form between the assorted inhabitants of the little house as the authorites start to close in. Bis Zum Horizont Und Weiter/To The Horizon And Beyond was shown as part of the New German Films series at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Two terminal patients leave their hospital beds for the open highway in this German road movie, a popular success in Germany. When cancer victim Rudi (Jan Josef Liefers) meets Martin (Til Schweiger), who has a brain tumor, they knock back tequila one night and decide to head north to experience life at the seashore, something Rudi has hoped to do his entire life. However, the car they've stolen belongs to two thieves and contains a million marks. Soon they're being pursued by both thugs and cops. The film's soundtrack includes Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". Shown at the 1997 London and AFI/Los Angeles film festivals. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Two star-crossed lovers, separated by the Berlin wall for thirty years are reunited. The major events in their separate lives become the focus in this German political drama. The story begins in August 1961 as the Wall is being built. In Eastern Berlin a group of young adults plans their escape. Included in the group are Konrad and Sophie who has an aunt on the other side. It is the aunt who will sponsor the escapees. Escape will be the only way Konrad and Sophie will be able to stay together. Konrad is involved in a mishap en route and must remain in East Berlin. In 1968, the lovers at last get a chance to briefly meet in Prague. There they express their frustration and pain. At least there, in Prague they can find occasional happiness. Suddenly Russian tanks appear and destroy their new dream. 1980 comes. Sophie and Konrad have since married other people. Their next meeting is bittersweet as they look back upon their promise which was broken by circumstance, and by the decisions each lover had to make. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In the old East Germany, all sorts of otherwise innocent activities could earn the unwary a prison term. In this story, Hans-Peter Dallow (Michael Gwisdek) was sentenced to two years in prison for acting as a substitute pianist for a tango group in a cabaret when the original pianist became ill. Was his charitable act illegal because the tango symbolizes freedom, because he broke union rules, or because students were present at the cabaret? Any one of these offenses could be the reason for his arrest. Now this puzzled history teacher is back out of prison, and he has become an outcast, unable to get a job, shunned by his old friends. It is 1968, and events in nearby Czechoslovakia have convinced everyone that the totalitarian chill they are experiencing will be permanent. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The time is the French Revolution; the place is the village of Travers, ensconsed in neutral Switzerland. Prussian aesthete Herman Beyer is on the verge of divorcing wife Corinna Harfouch. Radical writer Uwe Kokisch, Corinna's lover, hopes to find a way of smoothing out animosities. What follows, however, is a nonstop drinking binge. The film subliminally addresses the then-prevalent issue of a divided Germany. Whether or not it succeeds is unimportant; Treffen in Travers (Reunion in Travers) has proven to be a crowd pleaser wherever it has been shown. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this German and Turkish romance, a cocky young man joins a judo class and bets his male classmates that he can get any one of the female students to sleep with him in two days. His main target is a beautiful Turkish girl. Unfortunately, she has other things on her mind and rebuffs him. She is terribly upset with her family because her father will not allow her to pursue a higher education. Things get increasingly tense at home, and she begins seeing her romantic pursuant in a better light. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide