Dampfnudelblues

Franz Eberhofer is a policeman. Something happened in the city and as a punishment he was posted to the village where he was born. Almost nothing happens there; he sits alone at the station. He lives in the same house as his father and grandmother and gets on badly with both. Then the headmaster is found dead. Everyone accepts it as an accident and Franz does not. He begins investigating and ends up talking to everyone in the village; they all know each other, they all have a past, and none of them tells the truth. Ed Herzog directs. Sebastian Bezzel plays Franz. The source is Rita Falk's novel. The film belongs to a series; films adapted from the Eberhofer novels are made regularly in Germany and do steady business. The humour at its centre is about the Bavarian provinces; dialect, food and neighbourly relations are the real material. The murder plot is in second place; the narrative uses the crime story as a pretext. The grandmother and the meal scenes are known elements of the series, and the title comes from a Bavarian dessert. The narrative does not idealise the village; its closedness and its gossip are shown directly. Its limit is locality; most of the humour depends on language and region. Who it is for: viewers who like German provincial comedy and light crime films. Who it is not for: the humour depends on language, the plot is weak, and the characters are incomplete for anyone who does not know the series.