Suddenly she is sitting in his car: Imke Leopold (Franziska Hartmann), an old flame of Thorsten Falke (Wotan Wilke Möhring), is looking for the chief inspector in Hamburg. Leopold works as an investigative journalist and wants to uncover a supposed real estate scandal on her home island of Norderney. She demands Falke’s help, but he refuses – white-collar crime is not his area. But then his ex-girlfriend calls him in the middle of the night and reports an attack that almost cost her her life. Falke goes to the North Sea island with his colleague Julia Grosz (Franziska Weisz) to check on things. A friendship service quickly turns into a real case: a real estate agent whom Leopold gives as the source for their allegations is found dead in his house.
Filming took place in winter 2019 on Norderney. Director Lars Henning delivers idyllic landscape shots of untouched forests, sandy dunes and the vastness of the mud flats. At the same time, however, it also manages to give the island a menacing feel, as a place from which the detectives feel increasingly trapped and from which they cannot easily escape. This scenario is supported by dramatic music recorded by the NDR Radio Philharmonic. This trepidation and a final fight for life and death make the thriller very exciting for large parts.
It’s a kind of ménage-à-trois that Falke and Grosz get involved in, because during their investigations on Norderney they can’t do a single step without Imke Leopold. The journalist accompanies them to interrogations and gets heavily involved in police work. That Falke in particular is so weak as to allow this is surprising. The commissioner, who is otherwise so rational, is guided by his feelings and increasingly loses his distance from the case. It has long since dawned on viewers that not everything is as it seems at first glance.
Falke doesn’t really say what happened between him and Imke Leopold, but his colleague Julia Grosz digs deeper. She wants to know more because she suspects the journalist – and not just because Leopold shoots wild rabbits with a gun, skins them and then frys them in a pan. Falke, on the other hand, stands between the two women: he still feels a connection to Imke, but doesn’t want to offend his colleague either.
As federal police officers, Falke and Grosz are investigating throughout northern Germany. Your trip to the East Frisian island of Norderney is definitely worth seeing, and not just because of the great nature shots.
The “Tatort” episode “Tödliche Flut” was first broadcast on January 24, 2021. ARD will repeat the film on Friday, July 14, 2023 at 11:20 p.m.
