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The investigators at the scene: Winter at the pool
Photo: Thomas Kost / WDR
The new Cologne »crime scene« is a swimming pool thriller set in the acting milieu.
In Hollywood it would have been staged like this: young, beautiful, well-trained people watch and cheat at the edge of the pool while the sun breaks in the light blue water.
At some point there is a dead body in the pool.
In Cologne it has now been staged like this: A bunch of aging TV actors are grouped around a pool that steams on a cold winter night or in which the autumn leaves are rotting.
Here, too, at some point there is a corpse in the pool.
The corpse is that of the vain and amoral Thore Bärwald (Max Hopp), who liked to ridicule his colleagues.
The pool belongs to the industrious TV worker Moritz Seitz (Thomas Heinze), who as »Tierdoktor Schröder« has made a reasonable living in the shallower zones of TV entertainment.
Role profile: »The doctor the sows trust.«
Former star, now alcoholic
The death occurred on New Year's Eve 2017/2018, pool owner Seitz was convicted a little later as a murderer. But inspector Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and colleague Schenk (Dietmar Bär) do not get any rest, because four years later fellow actor Ole Stark (Martin Feifel) suddenly claims that he is the real murderer. Stark is an alcoholic and long gone as a TV face, he has little to lose, maybe he can even get away from liquor in prison. Now he willingly goes into the building - and Seitz comes out.
But the world has apparently not waited for the return of the good animal doctor Schröder, and a shadow of suspicion remains on his biography.
As a doctor who people and animals trust, Seitz is no longer acceptable, and his wife (Nina Kronjäger), a struggling actress who was stripped of her long-time job in a police evening series, has another, younger man in the common house fetched.
A patrolman in uniform, of all things.
It feels a bit like "big city district" in your own real four walls.
Terminus »Evening«
But what really happened back then?
The filmmakers artfully switch between the two time levels, the short, pointed dialogues intertwine.
Author Wolfgang Stauch and director Torsten C. Fischer had previously shot the Cologne »Tatort« episode about crimes from the GDR era;
already there the narrative levels flowed elegantly into each other.
In »Four Years«, the two filmmakers find a strong sound in the constant change of times: sarcastic, but also tender at times.
This "crime scene" is reminiscent of "Twilight Boulevard," Billy Wilder's 1950 inside Hollywood thriller. In it, former silent film star Gloria Swanson played a former silent film star in his swimming pool at the beginning of the film dead journalist drives.
Like Wilder, those responsible for the "crime scene" also play with biographical set pieces of their actors: Feifel himself made it public that he is an alcoholic.
Heinze and Kronjäger were a couple in real life for a long time.
The looming twilight of popularity appears visually and verbally present in every moment in this thriller set in the darker seasons.
Just how the word "Evening" is repeatedly pronounced here by those involved - as if it were about the last exit before the actor's death.
That is what is touching about this evil "crime scene": Feifel, Heinze and Kronjäger played as if their lives were at stake.
Confusion of this life with the embodied roles is not excluded.
In one of the most beautiful scenes, Kronjäger's ex-cop says to the inspector: »I'm a specialist.
I played what you are."
Rating:
9 out of 10 points
"Tatort: Four Years",
Sunday, 8:15 p.m., The First