A student falls from the stairs – who can have provoked the accident? Everyone. The episode “Marlon” easily protects problem children and overburdened educators.
Lisa Bitter plays Commissioner Johanna Stern.
You can do without a boy like that: he hits and kicks his parents, breaks the arm of a classmate, and when he’s angry he demolishes his exquisite room furnishings. And the monster kid Marlon is always angry. Unless he’s dead.
A social worker at his school, Marlon’s only confidant among adults, finds him lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Who could have provoked the accident? When she asked her classmates, the teachers, the caretaker and the parents, inspector Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) received a unanimous answer: “Everyone.”
Hematomas, broken ribs, now what?
The story of a human explosive device from the tender nine years has everything to crawl under the skin. The director Isabel Braak tells the story without art, chronologically along the time axis is determined, at first it seems a successful thing. The courage to do without creative antics is rarely found in the crime series. And children are always quota bringers.
The Ludwigshafen inspectors are faced with a case (book: Karlotta Ehrenberg) that really shouldn’t exist: a schoolboy falls down the stairs – he falls, it soon becomes apparent – and those around him react visibly relieved. But then the investigators discover traces of two different crimes on Marlon’s body: the fatal blow and broken ribs. The circle of culprits is narrowing. Is Marlon a victim of domestic violence?
Disappointment follows the question. The film’s strengths are short-winded. Far too early, the script and direction give up the courage to use unadorned dramaturgy, and one takes refuge far too hastily in something that is capable of winning a majority: kitchen psychology and perfectly level characters.
Marlon’s mother (Julischka Eichel) is the guilty bundle of nerves, she lacks the talent to be a popular figure. Marlon’s father (Markus Lerch) is married to his intellect and his upscale bookstore. However, a shelf for parenting guides seems to be missing. It is a product range deficit with consequences.
Sisterhood is not full-length
The decision to equip the single parent Johanna Stern and her colleague, the robust Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts), with biographical parallels to the case is also unnecessary. At the peak of their self-analysis, the two sit in the car and top each other off with soulmate comparisons. It has never been so human between the women, but it doesn’t do them any good.
The younger shows all sympathy for Marlon’s (hiddenly) angry mother; the other was once Marlon himself, an angry child. And because the investigators quickly agree on where the wild guys live, the ideal suspect is already there. It is the father of a classmate who was abused by Marlon. Oliver Ritter is this man with household responsibilities, married to a professionally successful absentee wife and father to a nerdy show-off daughter.
The alleged villain is played by Swiss actor Urs Jucker as a leather jacket chav with problems of frustration. The character is the shining light of the film, the book draws her as ambivalently as one would wish for the rest of the staff. However, it is worthwhile not to do the same as the commissioners and to wait with the prejudice. Because even if this episode doesn’t give much on the way, one thing has been understood: Men with beards and unwashed clothes can be more helpful for a child than parents with blow-dried hair.
“Tatort” from Ludwigshafen: “Marlon”, Sunday, 8.05/8.15 p.m., SRF 1 / ARD.