Sweet Disaster (2021)

For painting therapist Frida, the good news is that at 40 years old, she has become pregnant. The bad news is that the father of her child is leaving to reunite with his ex. This just won't do for Frida; so despite the increasing pressures on her body of a late pregnancy, she comes up with a series of harebrained methods to win him back. After 2014 short AlieNation took on puberty-stricken teenagers, first-time feature filmmaker Laura Lehmus finds all the right brush strokes in this witty, enlivening story about what to do when it all goes wrong. She is never afraid to incorporate colour - both metaphorically and literally. German star Freiderike Kempter gives a layered central performance, hitting all the comic beats but also giving space for us to acknowledge the troubles Frida is feeling. We can't help but feel schadenfreude as Frida's schemes flicker and fail; but we also feel a strong empathy for a woman who is fighting back against the vicissitudes of existence, even as new life grows within her. Not since Toni Erdmann have cliches around German humour been so artfully disproven.