- Max is very ill. He decides to steal in his own company. But when he tries to run away with the money, he has a car accident that takes him to Emma's pigs farm.
- Emma Struwe (Jördis Triebel) lives in a farm which is about to be repossesed because she can't pay her debts. She is renowned in the 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 one arrives, she calms it down with whispers and caresses before slitting its throat.
Max Bien (Jürgen Vogel), a car salesman, has just been diagnosed with incurable cancer. What he thought was recurrent stomach ache will soon kill him. 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 wants to travel to Mexico for his last days and, in order to fund the trip, he steals the cash kept in the car showroom. Max's best friend and co-worker, Hans Hilfinger (Martin Feifel), catches Max trying to steal the money and a car chase ensues. Max, who's driving a Jaguar, goes crazy and drives the car off the road at full speed. His car rolls a long way down the hill and lands on Emma's plot of land.
The crash wakes Emma up and goes to see what has happened. She rescues Max from the car, discovers the box with a huge amount of cash and to disguise the fact that she found it, she sets the car ablaze.
The police-bailiff Henner (Hinnerk Schönemann), who had brought the foreclosure notice to her, makes her an offer to live with him and his mother. She takes her shotgun and threatens him, while his mother (Karin Neuhäuser) is in his police car and shouts to him that she doesn't deserve him. He later returns on police business to investigate what happened to Max. The accompanying Jaguar mechanic (Steffen Schroeder) points out that the burnt out car was an act of arson and not due to the accident.
Max recovers from the accident but not the cancer, and he stays in Emma's house. In exchange for the hospitality he cleans and tidies up her kitchen, which annoys Emma as she's used to her own disorderliness.
The bailiff arrives again, this time on his own, to talk to her about the vet criticism that her pigs are being slaughtered without anaesthetic. The bailiff proposes to Emma, even though he suspects that she's having a love affair with someone, but she turns him down.
Throughout this conversation, Max remains hidden upstairs, when he finds the huge amount of money he was carrying hidden in one of Emma's drawers. He confronts Emma, who accuses him of being a thief. Max throws up because of his illness and wants to leave the farm. That night Hans breaks into Emma's farm looking for Max and the money, as the bailiff suggested to him that the accident wasn't an accident at all. Emma pushes him to one of the pigsties and locks him up.
After their argument Max and Emma make up and make love. 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 bailiff arrives when Emma is away and meets Max. 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 from the stolen money to pay off all Emma's debts. The bailiff realises that Max is the mystery lover. At dinner, the lights and the hi-fi come back on. Emma is ecstatic, she didn't know that Max has paid off her debts. She hugs him, but at that moment Max throws up again and clearly his health is deteriorating rapidly.
Emma wakes Hans up and releases him, saying that Max is dying. Hans throws Emma in the Sty and locks her in instead. When Hans sees that Max is so bad, he drives Max to hospital. The first thing doctors do is to give him a huge dose of morphine. Emma eventually breaks the pigsty door down and drives to the hospital in 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 him anybody at that time of night. in the car park she honks her tractor's horn until Max wakes up.
Max and Emma get married the next morning. The registrar asks them what Surname they will use and they realise neither of them knows the other's surname. At the small wedding party Max tells Hans he's given the money to Emma. By now Hans is not worried about recouping the black market money which was not on the books in the first place.
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. They fall asleep under the stars. The following morning Max is at death's door. Emma carries him to a tree and we find out that she intends to kill him in the same loving way she slaughters the pigs. At first she can't force herself to, but Max picks the knife up weakly and gives it to her. Emma starts telling the story she tells her pigs when she's about to slaughter them and Max listens. Just as she finishes she makes a deep cut in his artery and Max quickly but peacefully bleeds to death.
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