The Good Life

For those of us who didn't have it easy growing up, we can reassure ourselves that a perfect childhood isn't everything. At least not for 56-year-old Anne Mette. Archive footage provides a glimpse of the wealth that her family once possessed, but now there's nothing left. Anne Mette and her mother traded the villa in Portugal for a small apartment, where they now live together on a small pension. All the same, Anne Mette doesn't quite grasp the fact that the days of servants, beachfront property and lounging about by the pool are gone for good. Without realizing it herself, she still plays the spoiled little princess, once so adored by her filthy-rich father. She makes quite a ruckus when she has to plunge the clogged toilet, and during a talk with the director about her life situation, she declares, "Work is still taboo for me." Her mother gets the blame for the hell in which Anne Mette must live, but she is also the only one Anne Mette can watch the old home movies with and dream about the old days, a glass of red wine in hand. The two women, who were followed for many years, seem sentenced to one another in their common predilection for the impossible: going backwards in time.