Jan Josef Liefers becomes the German Cary Grant

Jan Josef Liefers stands all alone on the Tempelhofer Feld. One wonders when it will ever be so empty when an airplane rumbles at Liefers. At first he looks incredulous, then he starts to run. A quote from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Invisible Third”, but a highly ironic one: The aircraft is just a model airplane that a little boy has misdirected. Before that, Liefers had been kidnapped by shady characters in the car and laconically asked if he could turn his mother down. This is also reminiscent of the classic film. “Requiem for a friend”, which runs on ZDF today, bows to Hitchcock. And in this reading, Liefers is the German Cary Grant.

“Requiem” is already the sixth film adaptation of the Elisabeth Herrmann novels about the Berlin lawyer Vernau. For Liefers the second permanent role next to his Professor Boerne from the Münster “Tatort”, which he does with Stefanie Stappenbeck instead of Axel Prahl, but also in the Boerne mode. In the most recent case, he has to represent his poor mother against nasty real estate sharks who want to gentrify her from her apartment. Those are Vernau’s favorite cases: those that don’t necessarily bring in money, but help the helpless and the underprivileged. Vernau, the Robin Hood among lawyers. He still meets with his oldest friend, the established Ku’damm lawyer Sebastian Marquardt (August Zirner), but only to find out that he never wants to be like him. Marquard has plenty of money, but also plenty of problems. A day later, Marquardt disappeared. And in Vernau’s office there is a tax officer who has been shot dead. That seems to be related. As in typical Hitchcock fashion, the innocent lawyer himself comes under suspicion – and investigates on his own to prove his innocence. In doing so, Nuttern’s process comes to a halt. And more corpses pave his way.

Liefer’s sixth Vernau case also lives from weird humor, the heart in the right place, burning problems in the capital – and great Berlin locations. That was particularly difficult in this case: “Requiem” was one of the first films to be shot after the first lockdown. Constant improvisation had to be made and locations had to be completely relocated. And a scene that is supposed to take place in faraway Mexico was simply filmed in Marzahn: in the gardens of the world.

“Requiem for a friend”: ZDF, Monday, 8:15 pm.

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