“Don’t be yourself; be pleasant,” is not exactly a piece of advice, nor is it an order given to women. The phrase is part of a self-regulatory mechanism so deeply ingrained that it no longer needs an antagonist to utter or embody it. In Women as Lovers by Caroline Kox, however, this is a daily mantra for Brigitte (Johanna Wokalek), who works as a hostess at a trade-fair showcase, presenting a portable bunker to sleazy suits of all ages. Yet, even under the X-ray-like gaze of her (female) boss and surrounded by significantly younger women wearing the same tight dresses as uniforms, Brigitte’s smile stays on. Women as Lovers, whose world premiere was in the Berlinale’s Forum section last month, has now screened as part of the latest edition of the Luxembourg Film Festival.

Women as Lovers is the directorial debut for Kox, based on a script co-written with Antonio de Luca and adapted from Austrian Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek’s book of the same name. The novel, published in 1975 and set at that time, originally follows the lives of two women whose dreams of the future are reduced to marriage and children. Updating this story to a contemporary setting demands a big swing and rearranging the context completely, so Brigitte is a debt-ridden, unhoused woman who lays a sleeping mat in the gym at night, and Paula (Hannah Schiller) is a schoolgirl living between the screens of her own vertical videos and the livestreams she shares with strangers as a camgirl. Questions of a woman’s value loom large, as does the sense of an ever-growing alienation, progressively dampening the humorous moments in the film until they solidify into daunting examples of heteropessimism. It’s devastating and painfully true, the devaluation of white, feminine desirability.

There’s a lot to admire in Wokalek’s command of the role here, building a hapless, yet iron-willed, protagonist without any prior context, and her Brigitte happens to overshadow the timid yet self-obsessed Paula, whom she endlessly compares herself to. Brigitte’s ageing body, twitchy smile and, at times, reckless behaviour serve as a distorted mirror to anyone who hopes to ever truly please a man. It’s not that she becomes a symbol of feminist resistance, but as her character spirals into desperation with a hint of madness, that’s when her actions seem to make the most logical sense.

Perhaps the most poignant streak of this tragicomedy is the underlying mother-daughter relationships that shape both Brigitte and Paula. Jumping between their respective situations, the film makes it clear that there’s a huge void between the characters and their maternal counterparts. If Brigitte’s mother is overbearing, constantly leaving voice notes and never engaging with her daughter in real time (or in an actual conversation, for that matter), Paula’s ailing mother is bed-ridden and suffocatingly needy. The fact that neither of them (nor their mothers) address the unbridgeable gap makes Women as Lovers even more crushing with the realisation that as much as fulfilment seems impossible, so does simple communication.

Women as Lovers is a German-Luxembourgish co-production staged by Coin Film (Germany), in co-production with btf and Amour Fou Luxembourg. Visit Films handles its international sales.