Rabbit Without Ears

Plot

Ludo Decker (Schweiger) is a Berlin based yellow press reporter. With his photographer Moritz, his daily routine is to spy on celebrities for the tabloid Das Blatt. He also uses his work for frequent sexual contacts with his objects of interest.

When heavyweight boxer and celebrity Wladimir Klitschko is about to toast his fiancee Yvonne Catterfeld at their engagement party, Ludo and Moritz are on the scene to report about it. Ludo breaks through a glass dome of the party venue, falls into the cake and is subsequently sentenced to 300 hours of community service at a daycare center.

There he meets Anna Gotzlowski (Tschirner), the center's manager. Anna grew up in the same neighborhood as Ludo and used to be picked on and mocked by him. She gets her revenge by appointing him to perform humiliating tasks. Ludo cannot fight this as his parole is at stake. Still, he is interested in one-night stands, and has an affair with a child's mother who frequents the facility.

After a while, the tensions between Anna and Ludo dissipate and the two become friends. When Anna's date with another man goes awry, she appears at Ludo's flat seeking comfort. The two of them end up in bed, yet Anna's hope that this could develop into something more serious is destroyed for the time being. Ludo sees her only as a friend, until Anna soon starts dating actor Jürgen Vogel, whom she meets in a park. After Ludo writes about her attending the German Film Awards ceremony with Vogel, describing her as the most beautiful woman around, he is fired by his editor.

In the end, Ludo realizes that he feels more for Anna than he had previously thought. During a children's festival at a local theatre, he crashes a performance and swears his love to Anna, who sits in the audience with the children. After his discharge from the tabloid paper, he takes up work at Anna's facility.

Cast

Music from the Motion Picture album

Track listing

1. "Mr. Brightside" (Jacques Lu Cont's Thin White Duke Mix) (The Killers) – 8:48
2. "Deepest Blue" (Deepest Blue) – 3:24
3. "Is It Love" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 2:18
4. "Anna & Ludo – Hold Me Now" (Rea Garvey) – 1:47
5. "Springtimes" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 2:56
6. "Lifeline" (Angels & Airwaves) – 4:16
7. "Autumn Leaves" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 1:42
8. "Everybody's Changing" (Keane) – 3:35
9. "Looking for Atlantis" (Prefab Sprout) – 4:03
10. "Rain" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 1:18
11. "I Still Remember" (Bloc Party) – 4:20
12. "Liquid" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 1:43
13. "Everything's Magic" (Angels & Airwaves) – 3:51
14. "Some Time" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 1:59
15. "Sad Song" (Au Revoir Simone) – 4:07
16. "Apologize (Timbaland presents OneRepublic) – 3:04
17. "A Rainy Day in Vancouver" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 1:38
18. "Rocket Brothers" (Kashmir) – 5:27
19. "Perfect Circle" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 2:57
20. "Cheyenne Blue" (Stefan Hansen, Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer) – 1:40
21. "Der Zauberlehrling" (Junge Dichter & Denker) – 3:54

The title

While doing handicraft at the daycare centre, Ludo sews a stuffed rabbit without ears. As Anna criticises him for it, he points at the fact that another rabbit made by the child Cheyenne-Blue has no ears as well. Anna thereupon claims that it is a Keinohrhase, a no-ears rabbit, which is able to hear through its nose. This scene was also used for the first teaser trailer.

A rare earless rabbit born in February 2012 at a zoo in Limbach-Oberfrohna, Saxony was named "Til", in reference to this film's title and its director. The baby rabbit was accidentally crushed when a television cameraman stepped on him, an event that was briefly the subject of international media coverage.

American remake

In January 2010, Schweiger sold the rights for the US remake of Keinohrhasen to Newmarket Entertainment; as he stated he hopes to direct the film and to engage Ben Affleck as leading man.

Awards