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Occupied Germany, not long after World War II: Nobody has anything much, there's poverty everywhere, and plenty of guys would do anything for a couple of bucks, food is hard to come by and meat's more valuable than gold and oil combined to the common man ... and the black market is flourishing!

Times couldn't be better for petty criminal Fritz Haarmann (Kurt Raab): Together with pimp Grans (Jeff Roden), he runs a racket to con war widows out of their husbands' stuff to sell to the shadier elements within the occupiers for extra food rations, he also succeeds in luring boys of all ages to his home for sexual favours in exchange for small sums of money ... well, especially since he never pays up but usually kills the boys and turns them into meat - to sell on to the unsuspecting public, or to buy himself favours with.

Eventually, Fritz is picked up by the police ... but not for the killings, they have no place in the soon-to-be "Wirtschaftswunder"-Germany, but because he has all sorts of connections to criminal elements at all stops of the black market - so police soon enough employ him as their snitch, promising to turn a blind eye on occasions in exchange for good intelligence even. Haarmann doesn't disappoint them, and especially him posing as a police inspector himself (under the not very watchful eyes of the police) gets him places - but eventually, more and more people, from Grans to his almost-girlfriend (Ingrid Caven) to his neighbour who has always hated him (Margit Carstensen) find out what goes on behind his walls ... and even in a society as broken as Germany was at the time, murderers of children are never fully tolerated ...

After having been in quite a few Rainer Werner Fassbinder movies, Fassbinder produced actor Ulli Lommel's first solo feature as a director - and that movie still owes a lot to Fassbinder, stylistically, And even if Tenderness of the Wolves never quite reaches the master's heights regarding depth of characters but also irony and edginess, it is certainly a most disturbing movie, first and foremost thanks to its very ambivalent villain and also to Kurt Raab's portrayal of him that's at times disturbingly likeable even. Plus, without going out of its way in terms of sets and costumes, the portrayal of post war Germany (even if the real Fritz Haarmann was executed in 1925 already) is pretty spot on and serves the story very well.

In all, a very impressive film, really!

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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