Punish Me

A woman has a relationship with a much younger man which leads her to explore desires she'd never considered before in this drama from Germany. Elsa Seifert (Maren Kroymann) is a woman nearing her fiftieth birthday who has a career as a social worker. Elsa is married to Raimar (Markus Voellenklee), who runs an auto repair shop, and they have a comfortable relationship, with one grown daughter who lives on her own. Elsa is assigned to look into the case of Jan Winkler (Kostja Ullmann), who is only sixteen but has a precocious criminal record and has just been released from a juvenile detention facility. When Elsa meets Jan for the first time, she senses that he's attracted to her, and to her surprise he begins stopping by her home, sometimes bringing her gifts. Elsa persuades Raimar to give Jan a part time job at his shop to keep the boy occupied, but this does little to blunt Jan's ardor, and Raimar strikes up a friendship with him. One night, aware that Jan is watching from the sidewalk, Elsa leaves the curtains open as she makes love with Raimar, which becomes the first step in an erotic relationship with her young client. However, Elsa quickly discovers Jan is a masochist with a deep need to be disciplined during sex, something she'd never encountered with her previous lovers, and her sexual experimentation has a profound effect on her life. Verfolgt has been screened in English-speaking territories under the titles Hounded and Punish Me.~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide