In this award-winning serio-comedy (the film took the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival), director Andreas Dresen collaborated with his ensemble cast to develop the story, pacing, and dialogue that create a lively roundelay of shifting marital mores. In the German city of Frankfurt an der Oder, near the Polish border, two couples in their late thirties have become unknowingly set in the banalities of their relationships. Chris, a drive-time radio deejay, is mildly distanced from his second wife, Katrin. His friend Uwe, owner of the bar and grill of the film’s title, has become neglectful of his wife, Ellen. When Chris and Ellen develop a little "thing" on the side and get caught in the act, the four characters become shaken from their stupor. Concerned with the small and intimate moments that make up life, Dresen’s film partakes of a textured immediacy and specificity that nonetheless opens onto universal themes of the human condition.