The easy life

Jan and Kathrin once had it all; their easy life allowed them to float through a world that was mostly kind to the beautiful couple. However, that state has slipped away from them. The world around them is changing too quickly, and they feel only stagnation, trapped in the conventions of marriage and bourgeois life. Kathrin was once a hyped writer, but today she leads a meager existence as a substitute teacher and tries to reconnect with herself at a sex party. Jan, a famous TV journalist, is tormented by an anonymous blackmailer who is sending out nude photos of him from his boarding school days. While her husband panics at the thought of his terrible secret being revealed, Kathrin finds herself drawn to the beautiful and mysterious friend of their daughter Lale, who is also her student. Following his acclaimed autofictional novel "Die Welt im Rücken," which was shortlisted for the German Book Prize and translated into 22 languages, Thomas Melle delivers "Das leichte Leben," a literary assessment of a society driven by longing for that easy life.