Sugarbaby

In a nameless, modern West German city an obese woman floats like a dead whale in a swimming pool. She eats huge meals in bed while watching television. Her small apartment is sparsely furnished except for a large photograph of a pretty woman and a man. The man's face is blacked out. These are her parents. She plays a record of a rock tune, popular 23 years ago when she was 15, called Sugarbaby. The woman, Marianne, works in a mortuary, where we see her tenderly washing and dressing the corpses. She is like a living corpse herself, as she goes about the city riding the subways and shopping for food with a deadened, expressionless face. One day she hears the pleasant voice of a subway driver and she catches sight of its owner, a handsome young man. From that moment on she is galvanized into action. She tracks him down and finds out his name, his schedule rotations, and his address. She spies on him in his home where he lives with his pretty wife, a hard-driving business woman who bosses him. When she sees the wife leaving on a trip, she makes her move. Transformed with perfume, jewelry, high heels, and sexy clothes, she approaches him with the offer of a candy bar, then invites him to her apartment for dinner. They begin an enraptured, pleasure-laden affair. She cooks them delicious meals, brings him presents; they make love, take bubble baths together. Marianne, luxuriating in the bathtub with her Eisi, now looks like a great pink and white Titianesque beauty. They are two Sugarbabies in Paradise. Then reality intrudes and Paradise is lost. His wife returns, discovers them together and follows them to a discothèque where they have gone dancing. She beats Marianne with her pocketbook, calls her a “piece of trash,” and drags off her errant husband. The lovers submit to this treatment like helpless children. We next see Marianne once again in the swimming pool, rising up with a black eye and screaming in anguish. But it is a scream of hopelessness and despair. The film