8 Fanny Fink is a German working woman on the cusp of 30, after which her chances of getting hit with an atom bomb will be greater than those of finding a good man, she laments. In the elevator up to her flat in a highrise tenement, she meets an African witchdoctor whose gyrations make the elevator go again after it gets stuck. As Fanny stares at him in disbelief, he hands her his card, which says he's a psychic and fortuneteller.

A few days later, desperate for a man, she makes her way to his apartment, where his palm reading tells her she's about to meet a handsome man whose number will be 23. The man is the new landlord of their building, who goes to each apartment with a rose in hand to introduce himself to all the tenants. Like her, he's a vegetarian, and the license number on his Jaguar is his initials followed by 2323. Fanny throws herself at him, but he seems uninterested. Late that night, however, he has a fight with his current bed partner who stomps out of his life, and rather than sleep alone he makes his way to Fanny's door.

She believes she has found her destiny, but alas he looks on her as strictly a one-night stand. Still not getting the message, Fanny arranges to follow him into the woods one afternoon, only to find him parked and making out with another woman.

Meanwhile, her witchdoctor has been evicted from his apartment and abandoned by his gay lover, a local TV weatherman. Even though she resents his failed fortune, when Fanny sees how suicidal he has become, she gives him shelter in her apartment.

The real story of this movie is the unlikely platonic friendship that then develops between Fanny and the gay Black man who turns out to be a native-born German with no more knowledge of witchcraft than can be attained in books.

I should mention, too, that Fanny is also obsessed by death and is taking a class on dignified dying, which includes things like making her own casket, sleeping in it, and choosing a gravestone. She also visits the incorrupt remains of an unidentified saint at a local cathedral to pray for help. Shades of Last Tango in Paris; this isn't "sex and death in Paris" but death and sex in Cologne. Lots of humor, some pathos, and a lot to ruminate on.