The edge canal runs like a vein in the outer west and north of Cologne, the cleaned cesspool of the big city flows in it and also the swamp water from the brown coal opencast mine. A young woman lies in the peculiar red-brown broth in a catch basin, dead and yet of irritating beauty, as she fits into the symmetry of the lock arrangement in the aerial photograph. The inspectors Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) and Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) do not succumb to the aesthetics of the terrible on site, but the coroner Joseph Roth (Joe Bausch) saves them from this with his initial diagnosis: the 19-year-old was terribly maltreated.
Schenk and Ballauf have been investigating together for 25 years, and the edgy coroner has been there for almost as long. One could assume that in such an anniversary year, the cream is really going to be hit. It is also used in the film “Trace of Blood”, for which Arne Nolting and Jan Martin Scharf (script) and Tini Tüllmann (director) are responsible, but differently. While the big social lines are often negotiated in Cologne, the detective story changes from an obvious social drama to a private chamber play. In it, the inspectors become secondary characters, they no longer stand around at the Wurstbraterei am Rhein anyway, where they used to negotiate the morality of the whole thing, which has long been in the museum. For this, the forensic technician Natalie Förster (Tinka Fürst) appears on the scene, who seems to lose herself in the confusion of the many DNA traces on the corpse of the woman who worked as a street prostitute and was a drug addict. Also because she is searching for her own unclear identity.
Even after so many years of service, Ballauf and Schenk can still be shocked
The dead man’s pimp, Mike (Robert Stadlober), has no self-doubt, equipped with a snotty brake, gold chain and balloon silk, he snarls at the investigators why he couldn’t have killed her: “Why should I kill her? She was my investment.” Wink, wink. Even in their 25th year of service, Schenk and Ballauf are still shocked. Aren’t we talking about people anymore?
How comforting to look into the warm eyes of Frank Baumgartner (Josef Hader), the caravan rental company with the social streak. He employs criminals without reservations, loves nature and somehow also people. Or not? Or is it? The Austrian cabaret artist Hader brilliantly plays the elusive character without his typical grant, without dialect, without black humor, which makes the role even stronger. And somewhere in between, Freddy Schenk says, “I’m too old for this shit.” One more reason to definitely see this film.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
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