In the spring of 1981, Romy Schneider, at the late peak in her fragile career, withdraws to Quiberon. Her time at a spa hotel in Brittany proves difficult: the doctor has not only forbidden her from smoking, drinking and taking pills, but has also put her on a strict diet. The deadly boredom is only relieved by a visit from her old friend, Hilde Fritsch. Unexpectedly, two men show up at the front desk, the journalist Michael Jürgs and the photographer Robert Lebeck, the latter of whom the actress has known and appreciated for years. In all likelihood, it is thanks to him that Romy, who for years has turned down nearly all requests for interviews, agrees to partake in a longer interview – or perhaps she is merely in need of distraction, or aspires to work on her public image. The interview, when published in April 1981, is a sensation.
Especially on the first day of the interview, Michael Jürgs' questions are particularly forward, if not brazen and provocative; occasionally, and most likely on purpose, he is deliberately insensitive. But Romy Schneider knows how to counter. "How are you?" he asks. "How are you?" she replies. And she draws his attention to a fundamental misunderstanding: "I am not the woman in my movies!" Jürgs asks about her relationship with Alain Delon, which had long obsessed the tabloid press. "It was a step to freedom." The reporter doesn't flinch from asking any question, not even about Harry Meyen, Romy's first husband, who had committed suicide: "How does one go about telling a son that his father has killed himself?"
The interview might have turned out differently had the shared late night activities not taken place. Romy, for example, is relaxed and happy during the visit to a harbor pub, but that is due to the excessive amount of alcohol she consumes. With that, her real problems fade into the distance, as do the rumors of the tabloid press which, as she says, "tire me!" The next interview day, the resolutions are already forgotten and Romy improves her mood with Champagne. She admits to being broke and in need of earning money. And that she has never been able to successfully juggle her private and professional life. Now, she is afraid that she is confusing her memories and reality. "I'm so tired," she admits later, after a short meltdown, and she doesn't mean just physically.
Romy Schneider was aware of the risks of such an interview, an interview that also pursued the issue of "surviving or falling apart". Michael Jürgs gave her the opportunity to shorten or edit the text, but she did neither. Was that due to resignation? Or was it a self-critical attempt to correct her public image so as to take the wind out of the sails of the speculations of the tabloid press?
The gradual self-destruction of a star, a topic regularly addressed in Hollywood cinema since the forties of the last century, is the true theme of this film. A film that would not be nearly as credible without Marie Bäumer: she not only displays a certain physical resemblance to Romy Schneider in cameraman Thomas Kiennast's B&W cinematography, but has obviously also deeply – and with great empathy – immersed herself into the psyche of her colleague, who died in Paris in 1982. 3 DAYS IN QUIBERON also tackles the ambivalent interdependencies that show-business stars have, despite all the conflicts, with those who report about them. Even if the stars do not like them, stars nevertheless need them.