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Imke (Franziska Hartmann) and Falke (Wotan Wilke Möhring): knee-deep in the flood
Photo: Christine Schroeder / NDR
The men all use the same word to describe them: intense.
And the looks of these men are always similar when they talk about them: fearful.
We are talking about Imke Leopold (Franziska Hartmann), investigative journalist in a black hoodie activist look, who devotes herself body and soul to her stories.
Most men try to keep a safe distance - and are magically drawn to it.
Like Commissioner Falke (Wotan Wilke Möhring), who suddenly finds himself on Norderney because his former love, Imke, who grew up on the island, researches a suspected corruption case here and asks for help: An investor buys all the land on the island and builds the dunes with holiday apartments too, local politics seem to be making money.
In the middle of the night, a masked motorcyclist appeared at Imke's and threatened her;
Falke's protective instincts are awakened.
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Commissioner Grosz (Franziska Weisz): Coming to the aid of colleague Falke
Photo: Christine Schroeder / NDR
The question arises whether a woman like Imke really needs such protection.
One of the best scenes of this suggestive psychological thriller goes like this: Imke hears it rustling in the garden of her house and curses: "The shit things are a nuisance".
Then she is already there with the hunting rifle and slams two rabbits, which a little later she pulls the fur over their ears in order to let them bleed to death in the dunes until dinner.
Extreme woman, extreme reporter
There is a fine line along which the plot is told: It's about an extreme female character.
And it's about an extreme reporter personality.
When the »crime scene« was planned (script: David Sandreuter, Arne Nolting and Jan Martin Scharf), the Relotius case became public, which put the SPIEGEL and other publishing houses under pressure: Which supervisory authorities have failed when a manic fraudster has been able to falsify reports for years ?
According to those responsible for the crime scene, the Relotius cause influenced the further development of the material.
But as a television piece about functionality and printing scenarios within the media business, the crime thriller is completely underexposed.
Instead, he stays close to the unpredictable and quick-tempered Imke, who is
also a
reporter.
And at this level »Deadly Flood« develops enormous force.
This is mainly thanks to the leading actress Franziska Hartmann, who is best known from Jan Bonny's heavy current TV dramas (“About Barbarossaplatz”).
Hartmann is an excess actress who can switch from being unleashed to being raptured in a matter of seconds.
This »crime scene«, in which she gives the femme fatale with unrestrained Rasta curls, an insatiable sambuca thirst and an endless wanderlust, is above all her film.
The North Sea sloshes cold
Director Lars Henning sends Hartmanns homeless to a desolate and inhospitable Norderney.
Henning once shot a risky Frankfurt »crime scene« about micro-trading, in which he staged a suspicious banking house like a black fortress.
His Norderney is similarly threatening: in the dunes, construction pits gape like wounds, the gutted rabbits hang bloody on a wooden scaffolding, the North Sea sloshes cold and black.
And the NDR Radiophilharmonie plays a perfectly shaped psychological thriller score.
You were a little afraid when you heard that the NDR was sending its commissioner Falke to an East Frisian island again: The episode "Mord auf Langeoog", in which Möhrings Falke was parked on the island when Til Schweigers Tschiller took over Hamburg in 2013 was quite a disaster.
In the meantime, people are tired of the similar, gnarled junk-and-bakery mixes of North Sea and Baltic Sea thrillers with which ARD and ZDF complete their prime time.
But the large audience obviously loves it when the seagulls sing soothingly and the sea rushes during the hunt for the perpetrators.
For example, “North by Northwest” has now topped the middle “Tatort” ratings.
The episode last Thursday saw over ten million people.
"Deadly Flood" is a little different from other coastal crime novels.
The film looks less like a commercial for a bitter brand of beer, more like a horror film.
One feels a little reminiscent of Jacques Tourneur's "I Walked With a Zombie", the mother of all island shockers from 1943, who tells of voodoo magic in the Caribbean.
Like a sleepwalker, Falke staggers after the inflamed reporter over the rugged island - and suddenly wakes up in the mudflats when the cold black tide comes up.
Voodoo in East Frisia, that actually works quite well here.
Rating:
7 out of 10 points
"Tatort: Deadly Flood",
Sunday, 8:15 pm, Das Erste
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