In her third case, Heike Makatsch, as “Tatort” commissioner Berlinger, has to do with a blind law student and a decadent young couple. But it is also about the single investigator herself.
Mainz – The “Tatort” viewers experience the fatal shot in a gas station robbery right from the start from the perspective of the almost completely blind witness Rosa.
The adventure-hungry law student wants to buy two beers at the petrol station in Mainz, as she does every evening, one of her few freedoms between the university library and the cramped parental home. So she happens to be a witness. With only one percent vision in one eye, Rosa – played convincingly by Henriette Nagel – trained her hearing, smell and intuition, making her the unexpected perfect witness.
She can give Commissioners Ellen Berlinger (Heike Makatsch) and Martin Rascher (Sebastian Blomberg) precise information about the perpetrators, a woman and a man. To the surprise of the investigators, they are right down to the last detail – and soon some suspects can be summoned.
“Blind Date” is the name of Heike Makatsch’s third “Tatort”, which, like the previous one, takes place in Mainz and can be seen on the first at 8.15 p.m. on this Sunday. It’s not just about solving the murder, but also about the detective as a single “and not so talented” mother of little Greta (terrific: Elin Knipchild).
Although Rosa is in mortal danger as a witness, she categorically rejects police protection. Her hunger for adventure, her lust for risk and her disgust for overprotective restrictions, for which her father stands above all, is too great. Rosa soon recognizes the perpetrator from the gas station by her expensive perfume; it is a fellow student from the library. The young, self-confident Sophia Hansen (Anica Happich) from a wealthy family is tired of normal life, lives freely with her lover (Jan Bülow) in a penthouse apartment with a view of the Rhine and is looking for a permanent kick – exactly what attracts pink.
“Blind Date” plays with quotes from other films – but without going into depth: Sophia Hansen is reminiscent of Mia Wallace from “Pulp Fiction”, together with her partner of the gangster couple Bonnie and Clyde. In the investigation, a reference is made to a “affluent” US teenager from a wealthy family who is said to have killed four people while drunk.
But this reference is also not deepened, just as little as the world of experience of the almost completely blind Rosa. The figure of Berlinger’s colleague Rascher remains rather blunt and unclear, her own story with her daughter and his father is not very convincing. Many dialogues are wooden, Rosa’s dialect-babbling parents are overdrawn. Some scenes like the breakneck motorcycle ride of the two students seem artificial. The story itself, on the other hand, is sometimes long-winded. dpa
