Das ewige Leben (2015)

The penniless private detective Simon Brenner returns to his hometown of Graz, where he has inherited a dilapidated little house in Puntigam. He visits his childhood friend Köck, an antiques dealer next to the stadium, to borrow some money. But Köck’s business is doing poorly. Brenner asks him to sell at least an old Walther PPK he found in the attic. Köck, who owns the same kind of gun, then calls Aschenbrenner, head of the Styrian State Criminal Investigation Office. The three childhood friends apparently share a secret connected to the old pistol. That night, Brenner is unexpectedly visited by Aschenbrenner. Brenner throws him out, then shortly afterward shoots himself in the head during a severe migraine attack. In his dreams, he remembers his youth: images surface of four young men robbing a bank and then vacationing with a woman by the sea. Brenner wakes up in the accident hospital, suffering from short-term memory loss. Although his doctor, Dr. Irrsiegler, is convinced he shot himself, he believes he was the victim of an attempted murder. At first, neither of them knows their stories are connected: Irrsiegler is married to Aschenbrenner, who has a heart condition. While talking with the doctor, Brenner suddenly remembers his encounters with Köck and Aschenbrenner. She thus learns of the connection to her husband and that Köck has been blackmailing him for years. She therefore goes to Köck’s shop and shoots him. As she leaves the secondhand goods store, she is seen by his employee, Pinto, a Roma man. Brenner leaves the hospital and goes to Köck’s, but Köck is already dead. A cleaning woman finds them both and calls the police. Aschenbrenner arrives at the scene and has Brenner taken back to the hospital. Pinto is arrested because he looted the cash register after Köck’s death and is therefore suspected of robbery-murder. During questioning, Pinto recognizes on Aschenbrenner’s laptop wallpaper the woman he saw at the crime scene. The unpopular police chief wants to protect his wife and lets Pinto go. However, he has his employees Heinz and Pichler keep Pinto under surveillance; they cannot understand why he has been released. While they wait in the car, Aschenbrenner shoots Pinto without being recognized and plants the murder weapon—the one used to kill Köck—in Pinto’s apartment. Shortly beforehand, however, he hands the gun to Pinto so that Pinto’s fingerprints will be on it. Dr. Irrsiegler has, after her husband asked her about it, confessed everything to him and given him her gun. Since three identical guns have now turned up in the case, Heinz questions Brenner about them. They are decommissioned service weapons from the Graz police that police cadets at the time were allowed to buy cheaply. When Brenner refuses to be transferred to a psychiatric hospital, Irrsiegler arranges outpatient treatment and drives him home. Brenner visits the café run by his childhood friend Maritschi in the Gries district. She is not pleased to see him again and turns him away. Dr. Irrsiegler, who is Maritschi’s daughter, comes to pick her up. They both drive to Irrsiegler’s birthday party on Graz’s Mur Island. Brenner follows them and now realizes that the doctor and Aschenbrenner, the head of the State Criminal Investigation Office, are a couple. In the women’s restroom at the party venue, Brenner confronts Maritschi, and the story becomes clear: in the 1970s, Brenner, Köck, Aschenbrenner and a fourth childhood friend, Franz Irrsiegler, committed a bank robbery on a whim. The police cadets at the time used the decommissioned Walther PPKs for it. Franz Irrsiegler, Brenner’s best friend at the time, died in a motorcycle accident while fleeing. The others went on vacation with Maritschi in Yugoslavia. Since the young woman had sexual relationships not only with Franz Irrsiegler but also with Brenner and Aschenbrenner, in keeping with the spirit of free love, the identity of her daughter’s biological father is unknown. In any case, Dr. Irrsiegler was raised believing she was the child of the late Franz. As an adult, she fell in love with Aschenbrenner, who may be her father and who, as a successful official, was blackmailed by Köck over what had happened. Brenner witnesses police officer Heinz, who has been investigating Köck’s case on his own and has found incriminating surveillance videos, trying to execute an arrest warrant against Dr. Irrsiegler. Aschenbrenner puts him off. At home in Puntigam, Brenner confesses their youthful misdeed to Heinz. Aschenbrenner arrives and shoots Heinz with Brenner’s old gun. Brenner manages to escape on his moped by using a ruse. The nighttime chase ends on Graz’s Schlossberg; from overexertion, the police chief suffers a fatal heart attack. Immediately after Aschenbrenner’s burial, Dr. Irrsiegler admits to police officer Pichler that she killed Köck. Brenner nevertheless takes the blame upon himself. Pichler believes neither of them, and the film ends with Brenner cheering Irrsiegler up with anecdotes about her possible father, Franz, without fully explaining the past to her.