A Funny, Sad Exploration of the Heart

Dorris Dorrie’s “Nobody Loves Me” has a chic, lovely heroine with a tastefully decorated apartment and a decent-enough job inspecting luggage at the Cologne airport. What she doesn’t have is a man, and her friends and co-workers constantly remind her that “A woman over 30 is more likely to be hit by an atom bomb than to land a man.” You can guess what birthday looms imminently for talented Maria Schrader’s appealing and vulnerable Fanny Fink.

“Nobody Loves Me” is not, however, a conventional romantic comedy but rather the frequently hilarious but also serious and sometimes sad exploration of the heart from the director best known for the also shrewd and ruefully funny “Men . . . “ of a decade ago.

Indeed, the film’s key relationship is between Fanny and a gay neighbor in a huge high-rise apartment house.

At first the neighbor--a slim, handsome young man (Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss) born to a German mother and an African father--seems just a tad menacing with his African costumes and elaborate designs painted on his arms, face and clean-shaven skull. Never mind that he was apparently born just plain Walter Rattinger in the former East Germany; he calls himself Orfeo de Altamar, psychic and palm reader. He also is a drag entertainer, lip-syncing Billie Holliday and Edith Piaf in a gay bar. He’s a man who’s created his own world as a defense against a hostile society yet is capable of reaching out to others, whereas Fanny is all too caught up in herself. Dorrie has suggested that she considers Fanny symbolic of contemporary German life.

Orfeo is seriously unlucky in love and work--and, worse yet, health--but he’s great for Fanny, who discovers in him the kind of mutual, supportive loving that goes beyond sex. Orfeo indulges in lots of dubious mumbo-jumbo but his gifts do seem to help her snag Lothar (Michael von Au)--at least momentarily--the handsome but loutish new manager of their apartment house.

Dorrie does present Orfeo as possessing genuine psychic powers, but it scarcely matters whether we go along with this or not. What he does for Fanny is to build her self-confidence and, more important, break through her self-absorption and self-pity. In doing so, Dorrie gives real substance to the film’s generous doses of kooky froth. Let’s face it, lots of people will have no trouble in recognizing themselves in Fanny to varying degrees.

There’s considerable darkness in “Nobody Loves Me”--Fanny, for example, is taking a course on “conscious dying”--but there’s also considerable sparkle. “Nobody Loves Me” has a blithe, antic spirit that’s hard to resist.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film contains some sex and nudity, some strong language.

‘Nobody Loves Me’

(‘Keiner Liebt Mich’)

Maria Schrader: Fanny Fink

Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss: Orfeo de Altamar

Michael von Au: Lothar Sticker

Elisabeth Trissenaar: Madeleine

A CPF Distribution Inc., release of a Cobra Film production. Writer-director Dorris Dorrie. Producers Gerd Huber, Renate Seefeldt. Cinematographer Helge Wendler. Editor Inez Regnier. Costumes Siegbert Kammerer. Music Niki Reiser. Production designer Tom Schlesinger. Art director Claus Kottman. In German, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

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