Winterkartoffelknödel

Franz Eberhofer is a policeman in a small Bavarian village. His work is quiet; traffic checks, missing animals and quarrels between neighbours. People from one family in the village start dying one after another. It looks like accidents and nobody is suspicious. Franz is. He runs the investigation himself because his superiors take no interest. At home there is his father and his grandmother; she rules the kitchen and interferes in his life. His old friend Rudi comes from the city and helps. Behind the deaths is a matter closed years ago. Ed Herzog directs. Sebastian Bezzel plays Franz and Simon Schwarz plays Rudi; Lisa Maria Potthoff and Enzi Fuchs are in the cast. The source is Rita Falk's series of novels. The film is the second link in the series; the books sell heavily in Germany and a film was made each year. What the narrative builds is not crime but locality; much of the humour comes from the Bavarian dialect and the order of the village. Food is an element inside it; each film takes its title from a dish and the grandmother's kitchen is a fixed location. It took a strong result at the German box office and the series continued. The narrative does not take the murder strand seriously and keeps the tension low. The relationship between father and son is its second axis. Its limit is accessibility; bound to dialect and local reference, it stays closed to a viewer from outside. Who it is for: viewers who like German regional comedy and followers of the series. Who it is not for: the humour is very local, the crime strand weak, and it is not an entry point.