Synopsis for
Emma's Bliss (2006) More at IMDbPro »Emmas Glück (original title)

Emma Struwe (Jördis Triebel) lives in a farm which is about to go under because she can't pay her debts. She is renown in her area because she treats the animals in her farm as if they were somehow human - talking to them, caring emotionally for them, and especially treating pigs as if they were house pets; so when the time to kill them arrives, she calms them down with whispers and caress.

Max Bien (Jürgen Vogel) has just been diagnosed with uncurable cancer. What he thought it was recurrent stomachache is going to kill him in no time. The process could be slowed down for a while, but not stopped. The doctors advise him to go on with his routine, so as to have something to hold onto. He gets so mad, that one day, after work, he drives his sports car - a fancy Jaguar - like crazy, and more or less creates his own road accident. His car spirals out of the road. Just by change, it lands on Emma's plot of land.

Emma gets woken up by the huge noise. She goes to see what happens on her knickers and underwear. She takes Max out of the car and then he burns the car down.

The officer bailiff Henner (Hinnerk Schönemann) who brought the foreclosure notice to her offers to her to live with him and his mother in their house. She takes her shotgun and threatens him, while his mother (Karin Neuhäuser) is in his car. He comes back after the accident, as everybody is wondering where the person who drove the car is. He appears with an expert from the Jaguar company (Steffen Schroeder). Max is OK, and he stays in the house. He goes to live in the penthouse upstairs.

Emma shows the farm to Max, and in exchange, he cleans and tidies up her kitchen. Emma gets frantic at this.

The bailiff arrives again, this time on his own, to talk to her about the vet's denounce that her pigs are being sacrified without anesthesics, as there is no niddle mark on their skin. He comments to her that he's never seen Emma in a dress before. She says she does it with electricity. The bailiff pops the question to Emma, but she refuses. He belives that she has a love affair with the man of the Jaguar. He doesn't reprise the question, though, and she will wait for Emma's answer.

Through all this conversation, Max is hidden upstairs. He finds the huge amount of money he was carrying hidden in one of Emma's drawers. He confronts Emma, who thinks he's a thief. Max throws up because of his illness and wants to leave the farm. That night, Max's best friend and co-worker in the office, Hans Hilfinger (Martin Feifel), breaks in Emma's farm looking for Max, as the bailiff denied to him that there was an accident at all. Emma pushes him to one of the pigs' cubicles, and imprisons him there.

They make love passionately. The following morning starts with Max mending a fence. Emma shows Max where she's imprisoned Hans. Max comments that he had never seen Hans sleep - Hans himself had admitted that he didn't really know Max that much. Max and Emma go frolicking on the grass.

The following morning Max has come back to the farm. He admits he's stolen the money, but Emma doesn't tell him about Hans. Emma gives Hans some food, they exchange names and then she leaves.

The polizei - led by the bailiff - arrives. All of Emma's animals and the farm itself are going to be auctioned off in a month and a half. Max pays 77,635 euros to pay off Emma's debts. The bailiff realises that he's the mysterious lover. Emma kisses Max when he comments that he didn't thought killing a chicken would be so difficult.

Max tells Emma to release Hans after dinner. At that precise moment, the lights come back. Emma gets ecstatic, as she didn't know that Max has paid off her debts. She hugs him, but at that moment Max throws up again in a really painful way. She hugs him.

Emma wakes Hans up, saying that Max is dying. Hans imprisons Emma up. When Hans sees that Max is so bad, he runs to pick up his car and take Max to hospital. The first thing doctors do is to give him a huge dose of morphine. Hans has forgotten Emma, who knocks and knocks on the door until she frees herself. She picks up her tractor.

All the movement of rashing cars is seen by Henner and his mother, and she tells him that Emma's too much for him. Emma arrives to hospital but the nurse (Martina Eitner-Acheampong) tells her that she can't visit anybody at that time, and that she can't walk in with her muddy boots - to which she replies kicking them off. She honks until Max gets woken up - at that moment Hans has come back to the farm to release Emma, who obviously isn't there.

In the morning, the bailiff arrives to check on her. He is angry, but he still worries about her. She is nicer to him than she ever was. He even says that he'd rather watch her with her shotgun.

Max and Emma get married. She asks him what his surname was - she didn't know it when the hospital nurse what the surname of "her husband" was. Hans attends to the wedding, and Max tells Hans that he's given the money to Emma, but Hans has made some creative accountancy and covered the missing money with some of the black-market money which their company operates with.

Max says that he's made a deal with Death: if he can make love to Emma once more, he will die sooner. Emma gets naked on the spot and they kiss and make love, on a mattress, on the grass, in the farm.

Night falls. The following morning Max dies. She carries him under a tree. She wants to kill him the same way she usually kill her pigs.

She can't. But Max picks up the knife and gives it to her. Emma starts telling one of the stories she tells her pigs when she is about to kill them. He listens to her. Emma cuts one of his arteries and Max slowly bleeds to death.

She calls Henner, who firstly hugs her. A funeral car takes Max away. Emma thanks him. He tells her to call on him for a beer some time in teh future. Emma walks to her farm, whereshe "sees" Max meding the fence.

She softly whispers "I love you".

She sits puts for a while. She directs her gaze to the audience.

Title credits.