Math class in the fourth grade, and teacher Krein (Sascha Nathan) takes particularly loving care of Julie, who is rather at odds with numbers. But where is Inca actually? Her place remains empty, and Krein has also made a special effort for Inka with tutoring sessions.
A short time later, Inka Werner was found dead in an allotment area in Halle an der Saale; there were signs of sexual abuse. The premonitions of Inspector Henry Koitzsch (as always in a class of his own: Peter Kurth) have come true. He and his partner Michael Lehmann (Peter Schneider) have to solve the murder of the elementary school student in the “Polizeiruf 110” episode “The Fat Man Loves” (ARD, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.).
It’s the second case for the team; For the first one, writer Clemens Meyer and director Thomas Stuber had already delivered an excellent script with tragicomic insights into social milieus. That’s the case this time too, the “police call” takes place in a high-rise housing estate. However, there is no comedy at all. It has given way to a leaden, sometimes threatening heaviness, which is visually reflected in pale, washed-out colors. And Koitzsch can’t really get his alcohol problem under control.
Meyer/Stuber once again focus on the small and small aspects of police work. At first there seems to be a simple solution to the child murder. Sex offenders are being questioned, but Krein is also targeted by the two investigators. Because: Inka has hematomas all over her body, the perpetrator must have weighed “at least 100 kilos,” the pathologist speculates. Teacher Krein is very overweight. But is he the type to commit murder?
The “police call” leaves this in suspense for a long time, showing the teacher, to whom the script does not allow a first name, as a lonely person who lives in a cuddly toy hell. But also as someone who likes to photograph little girls half-naked while splashing around. The scene in which he pours his heart out to Koitzsch is one of the film’s strongest; Sascha Nathan plays this with the pain of a frightened teddy bear. The scenes in which a mob of supposedly decent neighbors threatens and beats him are almost unbearable in their cruelty. But the resolution, which occurs almost casually, takes your breath away because of its rawness. Definitely worth seeing.
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