Anna is a former grande dame of the screen who, having turned 60, finds her career fading. She lives in a drab apartment in West Berlin and earns a living as a speech therapist but is always elegantly dressed and frequently exchanges secrets with her neighbour Michel. One evening, a young man, Adrian, robs her and not long after, the same youth becomes her student. Anna starts with the vowels, reminding him that “consonants take your breath away”. Unexpectedly, Adrian becomes the first and only letter of the alphabet as their nascent love forces them to renounce both language and other laws.

Can an older woman love someone younger than her? In the film, this question, while still carrying with it a disdain for the actions of the female characters it is directed at while absolving male characters, is used in a playful way to confront the audience’s consciousness. AEIOU – A Quick Alphabet of Love can be seen as a contemporary German version of Harold and Maude (1971), which played with taboos in its depiction of the relationship between a young man and an older woman. In this version, German director Nikoleta Krebitz shifts the emphasis slightly making it a dramedy – the two characters become eccentric and sympathetically justified criminal lovers. The film is simultaneously a warm tribute to Sophie Rois, one of the best-known actresses from Austria, and her career that included over 120 roles on both the stage and the screen.