- 4 out of 5 points
- Not happy fare for Boxing Day: the movie dissects a morbid mother-son relationship
What's it all about?
"Tatort" from Frankfurt - When motherly love turns into prison: An emotional case for Janneke and Brix
When sculptor Annette Baer (Jeanette Hain) comes home at night, she finds her grown-up son Lucas (Béla Gábor Lenz) in the bathroom. He is completely distraught and wearing a bloodstained T-shirt. He can't say exactly what has happened. The boy just stammers: "I didn't do anything to her." She, that is Cara Mauersberger (Viktoria Schreiber). The young woman has only recently moved from Saxony to Frankfurt am Main and is found stabbed to death in her apartment. Detectives Anna Janneke (Margarita Broich) and Paul Brix (Wolfram Koch) quickly establish a link between Cara and Lucas - even though the latter's mother tries everything to keep her son away from the investigation. Another lead leads to the gaming scene. Mauersberger was active there and was threatened because of her feminist videos.
Why is "Crime Scene: Loss of Control" worth watching?
Jeanette Hain and Béla Gábor Lenz carry this "Tatort" with their acting performances. The two very convincingly embody a dysfunctional mother-son team. She, the lion mother, who wants to protect her child at all costs and won't let go. He, the young up-and-coming artist who threatens to suffocate under all the love and control. "I have as much life of my own as your hollow plaster army", the son throws at his mother in one scene. An allusion to the art that Hain creates as sculptor Annette Baer in the film: faceless, white creatures.
What is disturbing?
The film (written and directed by Elke Hauck and Sven S. Poser) touches on too many topics and thus distracts from the actual focus: the morbid relationship between mother and son. That alone would have carried the story over 90 minutes. Instead, it also deals with sexism in the gaming scene and problems between East and West Germany. These are all legitimate topics, but they should have been developed in a separate movie instead of just being touched on superficially as they are here.
The commissioners?
Headstrong and independent - that's how the commissioners experience the artist Annette Baer. The woman exerts a certain fascination on Brix in particular. The eternal bachelor muses that he would like to "lose control with someone" once again. His colleague Janneke, on the other hand, seems to have arrived and is happy about her role as grandma - even though her grandson lives in Australia. After all, she can take part in his christening via video call.
Switch on or switch off?
Complicated family constellations may seem familiar to some viewers at Christmas. Being shown this in a crime thriller may not encourage everyone to tune in. But those who do will be rewarded with a complex story and outstanding actors.
Frankfurt detectives AnnaJanneke and Paul Brix also investigate these cases:
- So dark the night: dark assignment for Brix and Janneke
- Psychedelic drug thriller with Janneke and Brix
- A terribly broken family
- Two friends against the rest of the world
- Severed fingers and a hangover with diabetes
Read also:
- Caught up in the present: the end of "The Crown"
- What's next for the series hits?
- A coming and going in the teams
- 40 years of the music show "Formel Eins"
- Wolfram Koch, as commissioner Paul Brix, is intrigued by the enigmatic artist Annette Baer, portrayed by Jeanette Hain, in a case involving a crime scene in Frankfurt.
- Anna Janneke, played by Margarita Broich, and Paul Brix, along with their Frankfurt-based team, are also involved in cases such as 'So dark the night,' a 'psychdelic drug thriller,' and an investigation into a 'terribly broken family.'
- At a gaming event, Artur "ARD" Wolf, a producer, expresses interest in turning the 'Tatort: Loss of Control' crime thriller into a series, reaching out to both Wolfram Koch and Margarita Broich for their thoughts on the project.
- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung critic Wolfram Koch's portrayal of Paul Brix in the 'Crime Scene' series, praising his nuanced performance and noting his ability to bring depth and humanity to even the most morally complex characters.
Source: www.stern.de
