Christmas is just around the corner. The Swarovski Christmas tree glimmers brightly at Zurich’s main train station. The entire city seems t be preparing for the holidays. In the fifth district and at Sihlquai where the prostitutes work is not as festive. Judith is a social worker in a café for sex workers. After her shift she meets her lover early in the morning before going home to her husband. Lena and Martin are expecting their second child. Their 6-year-old son finds a piece of paper in the car that has “anal lubricant” written on it. Rolf is not looking forward to Christmas: his wife left him, he hasn’t told his cantankerous father yet about the break-up and his adult daughter isn’t interested in visiting over the holidays. Maria from Spain is also lonely since her husband died. At church she decides to ask the widower Alfredo for dinner. And then there is the 18-year-old Bulgarian, Mia, a sex worker, who is excited about spending Christmas at her mother’s. It also gives her a chance to see her daughter. At first it seems as though each person in this top-class ensemble – among others, the Almodovar regular Marisa Pareda and André Jung – in this excellently acted stories of love and sex is bubbling but then Mia (Luna Zimic Mijovic) moves to the centre of the story. All their paths cross with her on a grey Christmas day, either as social workers, neighbour, john or as a distressed wife. They all show her small gestures of contempt. This episodic tale gathers speed and an oppressive density. The noose of disdain, indifference and prudery on the margins of society slowly tightens.

Hendrike Bake