This
provincial Bavarian town has a picturesque Medieval festival, but it is a
border town, with border town kind of establishments. It is also a divided
town. One faction believes young Sina Kolb really was murdered by the mentally
challenged convicted of the crime, whereas the larger faction suspects he was
railroaded by the cops. A recent transfer from the Berlin police department
will start digging up the past when investigating a potentially related murder
in Dominik Graf’s The Invisible Girl,
which screens during the Graf retrospective at Anthology Film Archives.
Niklas
Tanner wanted a fresh start after he was erroneously accused of acting
improperly with a witness. Rather inconveniently, he immediately has a
one-night stand with a woman who will factor prominently in his first case in
the fictional burg of Eisenstein. It turns out Inge-Marie Kolb was Sina’s
mother. She also happened to meet Eva Lorant shortly before her death. Lorant
claimed to have seen the missing Sina after her presumed murder, according to
the cops’ bogus timeline. Obsessed with the case, she came to Kolb again, believing
she saw the grown Sina in the red-light district supermarket, where she worked.
Of
course, these are exactly the sort of details senior inspector Wilhelm Michel
is supposed to sweep under the carpet. He assumes the semi-disgraced Tanner
will be a perfect fall guy, if need be. Granted, the Berliner might not be too
smart, but he is tenacious. He will also find an ally in Joseph (with a “ph”)
Altendorf, the original detective investigating the Kolb disappearance, until
Michel replaced him.
For
German viewers in the know, Invisible
Girl probably slanders Bavarian politicians left-and-right, but for
Americans coming in without baggage, it is a pretty tightly constructed little police
procedural-political thriller combo. Ronald Zehrfeld (whom we hope you recognize
from Christian Petzold’s masterful Barbara)
is solid as Tanner, in a believably beefy, non-superhuman kind of way. Elmar
Wepper also nicely grounds the film in cynical morality as the prickly,
not-letting-it-go Altendorf.
Weirdly,
Anja Schiffel is terrific as Michel’s right-hand lieutenant Evelin Fink, even
though the sexual nature of some of her scenes with him are a little creepy and
off-putting (remember, this is for German television). More appropriately,
Ulrich Noethen is spectacularly slimy as the snake-like Michel.
Despite
a few excesses, Invisible Girl is a
highly credible mystery-thriller, with a keen sense of the Czech-Bavarian
border region. It also clearly demonstrates Graf’s professionalism. If it is
your stein of beer, you had better see it when it plays during the Graf
retrospective. Recommended for fans of ripped-from-the-headlines crime dramas, The Invisible Girl screens Monday (5/27)
and next Saturday (6/1) at Anthology Film Archives.
