Use for the Bremen “crime scene” team around Jasna Fritzi Bauer. But “Love Rage” is not for the faint-hearted. Is it worth turning on?
This film gets under your skin! Next Sunday (May 29, 8:15 p.m., Das Erste) the Bremen commissioners Liv Moormann (Jasna Fritzi Bauer, 33) and Linda Selb (Luise Wolfram, 34) will also go to their own psychological stress limit – and challenge the viewer like seldom before. In the episode “Love Rage”, the “Tatort” makers primarily rely on classic horror and thriller elements: scary dolls, hidden rooms, unknown skylights, pedophile caretakers, mysterious grandparents and disgusting neighbors.
What initially sounds like a “horror thriller out of the box” turns out to be a great stroke of luck. “Love Rage” shocks, creeps, disgusts and captivates. Only: Of course you have to like this kind of film. But more on that later…
By the way: Anyone who likes to see the Bremen “crime scene” because of the Danish actor Dar Salim (44) in his role as Mad Andersen will be disappointed. In “Love Wut” Moormann and Selb investigate on their own and without their Danish support.
That’s what “Tatort: Liebeswut” is about
At first glance, the Bremen detectives are dealing with the suicide of a mentally ill woman. After an apartment fire, the tenant’s body is found in her hermetically sealed bedroom. The woman in the wedding dress died of a shot in the head, on the wall a cryptic message: The devil is speaking through the walls and wants to get someone.
Liv Moormann refuses to be investigated because she is haunted by her own old demons around the house. But her colleague Linda Selb really wants to find out who the devil is. It turns out that Susanne Kramer’s little daughters disappeared after school. What happened to the girls? Did “the devil” take her?
The investigators realize that Susanne Kramer’s death will not be the only misfortune if they don’t react quickly. Susanne Kramer’s family environment describes the woman strangely unanimously as unstable, she even mutilated herself in earlier years. Who to trust? How is the excitement of the separated husband and his pregnant girlfriend to be interpreted? Are the grandparents’ concerns credible? What does the neighbor Gernot Schaballa know, who claims to have heard shots as the only one? And what role does the caretaker of the school, Joachim Conradi, who is desperately struggling with his pedophile tendencies, play?
It’s a race against time as witnesses die before the detectives can ask their questions. Liv Moormann must confront her confusing memories to find out who the devil is together with Linda Selb. This is the only way they can find the missing children.
Is it worth turning on?
Yes absolutely. “Love Wut” is by far the strongest “crime scene” in Bremen for a long time and the strongest performance by Jasna Fritzi Bauer and Luise Wolfram as commissioners. But: Of course you have to like this genre of thriller-horror crime to have fun with this film on Sunday evening. Of course, this episode of the crime series is not at all for the faint-hearted. For everyone else, “Love Wut” gets the rating “highly recommended”.
Only the numerous flashbacks by Liv Moormann, who feels reminded of her own difficult childhood, above all by her neighbor Schaballa, turn out to be somewhat questionable or superfluous. Without these insertions, the film would have been even more structured, even more clearly aligned. One sometimes wonders whether only crazy people live in Bremen. All secondary characters are portrayed as completely bizarre to pathologically insane – and thus sometimes exaggerated. Certainly not completely wrong as a conscious stylistic device, but in some scenes the characters seem a bit unrealistic as a result.
Nevertheless, “Love Wut” is a really strong piece of “Tatort” and after a few mixed editions and criticism, even for Jasna Fritzi Bauer and Co. almost like a real restart. In addition to a good script, great implementation and remarkable dialogues, the strong supporting actors are particularly praiseworthy, above all Matthias Matschke as a suspicious father and husband and Dirk Martens as the creepy school janitor.
