This is how the “Police Call” from Rostock becomes: A highlight of the Sunday evening crime year 2023

2023-12-17 14:48:35

The face in this film is thin and pale. The lips are thin. The view is always going somewhere. Evelyn Sonntag is a woman who thinks her life is beautiful. She wears soft colors. We see them against the light. Flowers like to be around them. In front of her, behind her. They grow on depraved ground.

Evelyn Sonntag is repression incarnate. No one can play this being present and absent at the same time, this refuge in a protected, sleepwalking intermediate realm from the pain, from the truth, this silence after the catastrophe, more beautifully than Judith Engel.

The second case for the new Rostock “Polizeiruf” duo Kathrin König (Anneke Kim Sarnau) and Melly Böwe (Lina Beckman) could also have been called “Refugees Only”. That would have firstly led the so-called social media on the wrong track and secondly, annoyed them. They often react hysterically to the traditionally tough, dark Rostock Sunday evening thrillers, which don’t skimp on more or less hidden references to their anti-fascist stance.

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But “Only Ghosts” doesn’t care about the migration crisis and doesn’t pursue politics. The story, directed by Andreas Herzog and written by Astrid Ströher, is about everyday violence in everyday life. About how men destroy children, girls. On the mechanisms of repression. And about what people are driven to do when they no longer know a way out. From the pain, from the powerlessness, from the great prison of silence.

It becomes clear in the first few minutes that it is better to put the children to bed before this episode of the long, dark Rostock crime story. You see a man with a gag in his mouth. Blood flows. You have to worry about your fingernails. He is tortured.

Between the images – you don’t hear any screams – you see a woman swimming upside down in the water. She’s not dead. She’s on the beach. An avenging angel. PJ Harvey sings about how she has cursed God and lies with the devil and wants to bring her love to her personal Jesus. The song is called “I’ll bring you my love”. He is as beautiful and as cruel as “Only Ghosts”.

Melly Böwe (Lina Beckmann) and Katrin König (Anneke Kim Sarnau)

Source: Christine Schroeder/NDR

The tortured man was a plastic surgeon. His name was Kay Wülker. And in the hospital that discharged him, they say he was a misogynistic asshole. The woman from the beach could have been Jessica. She was just declared dead. She was 14 when she disappeared. One of Jessica’s hairs is found on Kay Wülker’s body.

Evelyn Sonntag is Jessica’s mother. “Only Ghosts” reconstructs what her eyes saw before they disappeared, and what happened to Jessica, what drove her into drug and anorexia addiction, and who is now taking revenge in Rostock. It is the mosaic of several night-black crimes and a raven-black family that King and Bow have to put together.

Killing with the twitch of an eyebrow

The two of them still don’t know whether they should like each other or not – the one who was left behind by the great Inspector Bukow, who was transported to Siberia, and his half-sister, the woman who can be like a switchblade, and her colleague who is always in charge of the empathy department Seems to advertise Rostock territory, but is also able to kill debates with a twitch of the eyebrow, especially debates with male colleagues who can’t get over the fact that a woman suddenly comes from outside and tells them what they should do .

But that’s apart from the fact that König is now being given a new sub-story, which will probably be continued horizontally (her father, who was in the Stasi prison after his family fled across the Baltic Sea, which König’s mother didn’t survive), apart from that too the fact that the Hamburg theater berserker Lina Beckmann is gradually being granted a case in which she explodes like three hours as “Richard III.” at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, the only weakness of “Only Gespenster”.

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“Nothing happened,” says Evelyn Sonntag. This is the mantra of her life. She could believe it as long as the hair on the corpse had not yet been discovered. And she got a call. Evelyn Sonntag, who long ago needed someone to care for her soul, works at the telephone counseling service.

There, Kay Wülker is presumably dying, a voice that she knows speaks up. Jessica seems to be back. After a decade in the afterlife. The wounds that were previously thought to have been somewhat plastered over are opening up again. The prodigal son Henrik returns to the north. All those who have fled into their personal isolation meet again at Truth Come Out.

One stands out as a standout

Marcus Kanter’s handheld camera makes every shock visible and gives all the thinking and escape rooms a fantastic color. Even the smallest role is filled with the utmost precision and precision. In addition to the pale Judith Engel, Adrian Grünewald’s Henrik particularly stands out from the darkness of the story.

He became somewhat well-known as an abuse victim in Florian Forsch’s “Best Man”, he has something that David Bennent has, a defiance, an anger, something hidden and still hard. They give him – almost a Christmas wish – a leading role on Sunday evening.

Speaking of Christmas: If you don’t want to suffocate your already miserable Christmas feeling and don’t want to increase your fear of falling into the abyss of your family (it’s supposed to happen under the tree, we’ve heard), you should watch “Only Ghosts” sometime in January view the media library. But it should do it. It is a highlight of the Sunday evening crime year 2023.