A restorer drowns in Venice under mysterious circumstances. While the police see no evidence of a crime, the victim’s widow notices details and begins to investigate.
A crime thriller that takes you into the world of art is “Death Comes to Venice” on Saturday evening (July 13) at 8:15 p.m. on Das Erste. Anna (Alwara Höfels), a physiotherapist working in Vienna and mother of 11-year-old autistic Paul (Filip Wyzinski), becomes an unwilling investigator in the lagoon city. And her investigations lead her into an opaque art scene.
Anna has to go to Venice because her husband Lukas (Roman Binder, “The Vienna Crime”) was found dead there – his body was floating in a canal. Lukas was a respected restorer, most recently working on Botticelli’s painting “Portrait of a Lady” for a museum in the city. He was also gifted at reproducing works of art.
Was the dead man a forger?
The director of the museum (Julia Stemberger, “Sisi”) now accuses the dead man of forgery: Lukas only returned a deceptively real imitation from his studio to her house. But where is the precious original from the Renaissance?
As for Lukas’ death in the water, police officer Santo (Rudy Ruggiero) assumes that it was a typical accident involving a drunk foreigner and closes his file. Paul, on the other hand, accuses Anna, played melancholically by Höfels, of being to blame for his father’s accident. Their relationship had recently become difficult.
So the widow, to whom Lukas sent a mysterious art postcard shortly before his death, decides to take the investigation into her own hands. Meanwhile, Rafael (Christopher Schärf, “The Dead from Lake Constance”), a smart gallery owner and best friend of the deceased, wants to look after her and her son in the lagoon city.
A wealth of feints
The film, calmly directed by crime expert Johannes Grieser (“Ein starkes Team”) based on a script by Stefan Wild, in which the heroine also encounters cackling chickens in her husband’s run-down apartment and the rich art collector Mr. Lee (Hyun Wanner) in his palazzo, impresses with its abundance of tricks and insider details from the art scene. Although a perpetrator attracts suspicion (all too) early on, the emotional states of those involved remain complex until the resolution, finely portrayed by their actors.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
