This documentary on the German Ute Lemper begins with the year she spent in London playing Velma Kelly in the stage show Chicago, follows her to the Stockholm Water Festival where she performs live, a brief visit in Berlin, her music video for Parlez D'Amour, and ends with Ute and her children.
Director Valerie Exposito's cut aways and alternate camera angles spoil the footage of Lemper performing live, where her repertoire includes Life's a Swindle, Ich bin eine vamp, Mein Heir, Lili Marlene, L'Accordioniste, some Kurt Weill, and songs from her Michael Nyman Songbook. Lemper is also seen talking to camera.
Lemper states that, as a child, she was influenced by the "yelling" of Streisand, Minnelli, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, and the Streisand parallel can be seen in Lemper's style of performing. This is demonstrated in her Mein Heir, where she is more interested in show-casing her voice than keeping to the song's form. Lemper also rationalises her choice of material, the way Streisand does, for storytelling as opposed to an expression of purity of voice.
The rehearsals for Chicago, shown in black and white, where Lemper sings at the piano and dances under the hawk eyes of director Ann Reinking, shows the problems of her casting. Lemper is so animated, especialy in the way she uses her eyes, that she goes beyond a cookie-cutter version of the Bob Fosse legacy. Apart from Reinking's observation verging on paranoia, the most memorable part of this section is the large unexplained bruise on Lemper's arm.
Befoe the Stockholm concert, Lemper amusingly parodies the "star being filmed for a documentary" approach of Exposito, faux-hissing at the camera as she is lead on-stage, and Exposito intercuts her songs (often before Lemper is finished) with Lemper's continued interview. For L'Accordioniste, Exposito intercuts Lemper dancing in front of an accordion player, and there are cut-aways from the Nyman Songbook with photographs of graveyards and burned synagogues. The Nyman footage also presents Lemper at a different live performance.
Lemper's music video presents her as the outsider, observing people in love, an acknowledgment of the difficulty in portraying Lemper who drips in irony as a romantic figure.
We also are shown the oil paintings that Lemper created before she learned that she was pregnant, and that hopes to return to one day.