The Dumpling Affair

Franz Eberhofer is a policeman in a small Bavarian village. His superior Barschl moves into the village and makes Franz's life difficult. Then Barschl is found dead with Franz's pocketknife in his back. Franz is arrested. Sitting inside, he tries to work out what happened in the village, while outside his friend Rudi carries on the investigation by himself. Meanwhile the grandmother is in the kitchen, the father is in the garden, and nobody really believes Franz did it. Ed Herzog directs. The film is the fourth in the Eberhofer series adapted from the novels of Rita Falk. Sebastian Bezzel, Simon Schwarz, Lisa Maria Potthoff and Eisi Gulp are in the cast. It is a German production. It opened in Germany and Austria on 3 August 2017. The earlier films in the series drew large audiences in Germany and the run went on for years. The narrative uses a thick Bavarian dialect and most of the humour comes out of the language. The matter it treats is provincial life; the murder is mostly a pretext and the film is about the village itself. The family scenes run apart from the main story and turn at the same rhythm throughout the series. Food holds a fixed place in the narrative; every film in the run is named after a dish. The detective solution is simple and the film does not try to build suspense. The narrative assumes its own audience; the characters arrive from the earlier films. Its limit is context; the relationships are confusing to anyone new to the series and the humour weakens in translation. Who it is for: viewers who like German provincial comedy and following a series. Who it is not for: the humour is local, the plot loose, and the ending light.