Margarethe von Trotta's TV movie focuses on a woman whose life is destroyed by her addiction to alcohol. Angela Rinser is a happy mother of two children and quite successful in her job as bilingual secretary. The sudden death of her husband changes everything. She starts drinking and loses her job. Her children Felicitas and Max try to hush up their social decline for years because they don't want to live in a foster home.

When you're as pretty as Iris, choose an analysis of the love market as your doctoral thesis and also want to gain practical experience, you have to expect to get involved in delicate and not always entirely safe, but at least amusing situations. And since Iris can't manage all these love adventures alone, she enlists her circle of friends to help her with her research...