Cologne Sunday evening crime thriller: The most beautiful lovers in “Tatort” history

2024-04-28 09:33:18

“In love,” someone says in this murderous love film, “you always have to believe in the best, otherwise it won’t work.” That’s what the inspector wants. He really wants to. He is seen dancing in an aura of silence and happiness. That’s nice.

You see him, it’s almost even more beautiful, you’re amazed. That he, the stray, found her without looking. The soulmate, the woman who has her life and lets him have his.

There is a second aura around Max Ballauf, who we have never seen so naked in every respect – an aura of fear. It’s reflected in his face and you can hear it ringing through the speakers. Fear of losing, of losing your luck, of becoming guilty.

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Because as a person who wants to believe in the best, he is unable to switch off the inspector in him who always has to assume the worst. Mistrust eats up love.

It is the story of a doomed light that gradually goes out in a labyrinth of dependencies, pasts, blackmail, fear of loss and guilt, which Wolfgang S Tauch tells in his almost old-masterly relaxed script. S Tauch fulfills the complete specifications of a Cologne “crime scene” – it needs a local framework, it needs a social foundation, it needs people who become guilty without actually wanting to.

He needs things about which Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk, the commissioners with their hearts in the right place and on the verge of retirement age, can furrow their already furrowed brows and guarantee politically balanced dialogues. And on top of that, S Tauch lays the story of Max and Nicola.

Leslie Malton is Mariella Rosanelli

Source: WDR/Martin Valentin Menke

“This Time It’s Different” is two genre films. And the 90th case of the Cologne “Tatort” detective does justice to both narrative mechanics, which is perhaps the greatest miracle of this Sunday evening crime thriller, staged in a remarkably relaxed manner by Torsten C. Fischer and photographed in an old-masterly way by Holly Fink.

The case is as follows: A man was run over. He was found under a bridge. Anger was involved. He was a blackmailer. Used people’s fear, their fear of losing face and meaning. He had deleted all documents for his dirty business. But not a picture. Mariella Rovanelli was there with a good-looking youth choir director in the tent.

Probably twenty years ago. Somewhere in the Eifel. At a choir retreat. Mariella Rosanelli was a pop singer. She had a hit (“The man for whom it’s worth it”). That’s what she makes a living from, and that’s what she uses to finance a foundation that gets kids off the streets of Cologne. Anyone who kills her, someone says, kills both – the strange woman and her good cause. Nobody can want it.

Under the cloak of history

Nicola, who runs a small Cologne magazine, and Mariella, whose actual name is different, have known each other since they were young. You help yourself. Someone calls it crony journalism in “This time it’s different”. What no one should or should know (that Mariella was once not uninvolved in the abuse of young people by the said choir director, for example) is swept under the cloak of history. But that’s exactly where Max has to go. And don’t want it.

You can hear what he’s thinking. “Can you tell I’m lying,” he thinks. “Yes, I notice it,” thinks Nicola. Could be exhausting, according to an inner monologue. But he never will. Because Streib doses it wonderfully. And he uses a few nice narrative techniques – for example, at one point he links several interrogations so elegantly that one continues the other.

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It starts off with a nice twist and goes straight into the underground of history. Max asks what she’s doing. Oh, she has to read something about the Schleyer kidnapping and the state’s ability to blackmail and the question of whether one should give in to kidnappers and blackmailers. This is great because Jenny Schily plays Nicola – which she does with all the delightful intellectual approachability that is unique to her. And Jenny Schily’s father defended the Schleyer kidnappers.

You don’t need to know that. What you need to know is that Jenny Schily and Klaus J. Behrendt are perhaps the most beautiful couple in “Tatort” history. You sense right from the start that they wouldn’t have a happy ending. You can hear it in the gently wailing soundtrack, you can see it flashing across Klaus J. Behrendt’s face. S Tauch and Fischer have finally allowed him to switch from frowning to character subject. And he used that perfectly.

Wouldn’t have gone well for long anyway

Maybe it’s a good thing the way it is in the end. We had already seen Nicola and Max cuddling and brushing their teeth, ironing, doing everything that we never saw from Batic and Lindholm and Odenthal. They had already started having those miserable marriage conversations. About what her day was like. And that the other person should please take care of themselves.

It wouldn’t have taken long for Max and Nicola to meet up with the Schenks for a barbecue somewhere on the Rhine or at the sausage stand. And there would be nothing left of wonder and love, of silence and happiness. Everyday life is at least as bad a traitor as mistrust.