Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness

Maria and Anna are sisters and they live together. Maria is the elder and works as an executive secretary. She is precise and capable at her job. She pays for her sister’s studies. She wants Anna to finish and start a career. Anna is withdrawn and full of doubt. She threatens to leave university. She takes pills and keeps a diary. Maria grows close to Maurice, her employer’s son. What is between them turns into love. Anna reads this as losing the one support she has. Then she takes her own life. After that death Maria is left alone. She cannot reach Maurice either. She takes on a young typist from her office named Miriam. She treats her the way she treated her sister. Jutta Lampe and Gudrun Gabriel appear in the ninety five minute film, a German production Margarethe von Trotta finished in 1979.