Backdrop fallback

Virgin Machine

Virgin Machine

Share

Virgin Machine

"An unusual search for romantic love"

1989

1h 24m

4.7(12 votes)

Drama

Romance

Comedy

Overview

A German woman travels to San Francisco to find her mother, but winds up distracted by the sexually flamboyant culture of the city.

Links & Resources

Website IMDbView

Social & External

Production Companies

NDR

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Ina Blum

Dorothee

Marcelo Uriona

Bruno, Dorothee's Brother

Gad Klein

Heinz, Dorothee's Ex-Boyfriend

Peter Kern

Peter Kern

Hormone Specialist

Hans-Christoph Blumenberg

Hans-Christoph Blumenberg

Telephone Caller

Dominique Gaspar

Dominique

Susie Bright

Susie Bright

Susie Sexpert

Shelly Mars

Shelly Mars

Ramona

Fritz Mikesch

Man in the Backyard

Wolfgang Raach

Boat Sculler

Creative team

Directed by: Monika Treut
Written by: Monika Treut
Produced by: Eberhard Scharfenberg
Monika Treut

Similar Movies

Open Hearts

Open Hearts

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

Anatomy of a Murder

Anatomy of a Murder

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.

Stage Mother

Stage Mother

A conservative church-choir director moves from Texas to San Francisco to run her deceased gay son's drag club.

Dangerous Paradise

Dangerous Paradise

Heyst, a hermit on his own tropical island, plays unwilling host to red-headed stowaway Alma. Danger looms...

My Life Without Me

My Life Without Me

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

Italian for Beginners

Italian for Beginners

Several lonely hearts in a semi-provincial suburb of a town in Denmark use a beginner's course in Italian as the platform to meet the romance of their lives. The film, which unspools the connections and family drama shared between the students, complies with several aesthetic principles of Dogme 95 movement.

Freaks

Freaks

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

Wings of Desire

Wings of Desire

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.

The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

The Secret Life of Words

The Secret Life of Words

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.

48 Hrs.

48 Hrs.

A hard-nosed cop reluctantly teams up with a wise-cracking criminal temporarily paroled to him, in order to track down a killer.

Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

Four Rooms

Four Rooms

It's Ted the Bellhop's first night on the job...and the hotel's very unusual guests are about to place him in some outrageous predicaments. It seems that this evening's room service is serving up one unbelievable happening after another.

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Metropolis

Metropolis

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Imitation Girl

Imitation Girl

A mysterious young woman materializes in the middle of the southwestern desert, where each step teaches her about her new world and her new body. As she assumes her new life, she discovers she has a twin with whom she shares more than just an outward appearance.

Erasing Eden

Erasing Eden

A young woman sabotages her own wedding in order to reclaim her identity and obliterates her life in the process.

Stellar

Stellar

Set within the fluidity of time, touch, realism and reverie. Some may call this magic realism. Based within Indigenous knowledge and way of life, this story allows two people to heal, through touch, calm, love and patience in a fantastical space that leaves the audience dreamlike and yet it is dangerous and violent, there is love.

Leave No Trace

Leave No Trace

A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

Recommended Movies

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.

Voicemails for Isabelle

Voicemails for Isabelle

A young woman's hilariously confessional voicemails to her late sister are unknowingly redirected to a stranger, who begins to fall in love from afar.

How to Please a Woman

How to Please a Woman

When her all-male house-cleaning business gets out of control, a mature woman must embrace her own sexuality, if she is to make a new life for herself.

Together Together

Together Together

When young loner Anna is hired as the surrogate for Matt, a single man in his 40s, the two strangers come to realize this unexpected relationship will quickly challenge their perceptions of connection, boundaries and the particulars of love.

Love & Sex

Love & Sex

When her rather explicit copy is rejected, magazine journalist Kate is asked by her editor to come up with an article on loving relationships instead, and to do so by the end of the day. This gets Kate thinking back over her own various experiences, and to wondering if she is in much of a position to write on the subject.

All About Nina

All About Nina

Nina Geld's passion and talent have made her a rising star in the comedy scene, but she's an emotional mess offstage. When a new professional opportunity coincides with a romantic one, she is forced to confront her own deeply troubled past.

Ruby Sparks

Ruby Sparks

Calvin is a young novelist who achieved phenomenal success early in his career but is now struggling with his writing – as well as his romantic life. Finally, he makes a breakthrough and creates a character named Ruby who inspires him. When Calvin finds Ruby, in the flesh, sitting on his couch about a week later, he is completely flabbergasted that his words have turned into a living, breathing person.

Dirty Sexy Saint

Dirty Sexy Saint

Clay Kincaid hates the nickname 'Saint', he got for being too kind to stray animals and desperate people. Especially when it comes to women. With a rough and damaged past that has left him jaded, he doesn't do committed relationships. This is before he meets Samantha Jamieson, an heiress turned runaway in need of help. When she starts to work as a waitress at his bar, he discovers that she is someone truly special and amazing… someone that could warm his damaged heart.

Love Don't Co$t a Thing

Love Don't Co$t a Thing

A high school outcast pays a cheerleader to pose as his girlfriend so he can be considered cool.

The Souvenir

The Souvenir

A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.

10,000 Saints

10,000 Saints

A sweeping multigenerational story set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City of the late 1980s; adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

Woman on Top

Woman on Top

Set to the intoxicating rhythms of Brazil, "Woman on Top" is a spicy, sexy comedy about the magic of food, love and music. Meet Isabella, a sultry enchantress born with the special gift of melting the palates and hearts of men everywhere. When she decides to break free from her rocky marriage and the stifling kitchen of her husband's restaurant in Brazil, she spirits off to San Francisco in pursuit of her dreams of a real culinary career.

The World to Come

The World to Come

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.

He Said, She Said

He Said, She Said

Womanising, right-wing Dan Hanson and quiet, liberal Lorie Bryer work for the Baltimore Sun. Rivals for the job of new writer of a vacant column, the paper ends up instead printing their very different opinions alongside each other, which leads to a similarly combative local TV show. At the same time their initial indifference to each other looks like it may evolve into something more romantic.

Tortilla Soup

Tortilla Soup

A Mexican-American master chef and father to three daughters has lost his taste for food but not for life.

We Are Your Friends

We Are Your Friends

Young Cole Carter dreams of hitting the big time as a Hollywood disc jockey, spending his days and nights hanging with buddies and working on the one track that will set the world on fire. Opportunity comes knocking when he meets James Reed, a charismatic DJ who takes the 23-year-old under his wing. Soon, his seemingly clear path to success gets complicated when he starts falling for his mentor's girlfriend, jeopardizing his new friendship and the future he seems destined to fulfill.

A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate

A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate

When Marie St. Clair believes she has been jilted by her artist fiance Jean, she decides to leave for Paris on her own. After spending a year in the city as a mistress of the wealthy Pierre Revel, she is reunited with Jean by chance. This leaves her with the choice between a glamorous life in Paris, and the true love she left behind.

Dogfight

Dogfight

In the fall of 1963, Eddie Birdlace is an 18-year-old Marine Corps volunteer who is about to ship out with three of his buddies for a tour of duty in Vietnam. Planning a massive blowout for their last night in San Francisco, Eddie, his buddies, and a number of other Marines set up a contest they call a "dogfight”.

Am I OK?

Am I OK?

Lucy and Jane have been best friends for most of their lives and think they know everything there is to know about each other. But when Jane announces she's moving to London, Lucy reveals a long-held secret. As Jane tries to help Lucy, their friendship is thrown into chaos.

If These Walls Could Talk 2

If These Walls Could Talk 2

The stories of three lesbian couples -- who live in the same house at different periods of time -- who are at a crossroads in their lives. In 1961, Edith loses her lover, Abby, to a stroke. Linda and Amy struggle with feminist issues in 1972. And, in 2000, Kal and Fran try to have a baby with the help of sperm donor.