Ödipussi

Paul Winkelmann heads a carpet company in Hamburg. He took it over when his father died and has lived with his mother ever since. He is past fifty. She makes his breakfast every morning, chooses his clothes and treats him like a child. Nobody at the company takes him seriously. One day he meets a woman. Margarethe is a psychotherapist. Paul wants to bring her home and his mother will not have it. For the first time the man has to choose. Loriot wrote, directed and plays Paul. Evelyn Hamann plays Margarethe; Katharina Brauren is in the cast. It is a German production. Loriot was known in Germany as a cartoonist and television comedian; this is his first feature. The film took a very large result at the German box office and was among the most watched domestic productions of its time. Its humour is in Loriot's style; no exaggeration, the characters keep their seriousness, and the comedy comes out of the situation itself. Some sections come from the director's television sketches and those scenes are known separately. The matter it treats is dependence; the arrangement between mother and son is a habit neither wants to break. Evelyn Hamann and Loriot worked together for a long time and the pairing took a place of its own on German television. Its limit is accessibility; the humour is bound to the language and the habits of the period and stays closed to a viewer from outside. Who it is for: viewers who know German comedy and Loriot. Who it is not for: the humour is very local, the pace slow, and there is little event.