Der Herrscher von Edessa (WT)

Munich. Tom has to make a decision: Eric, the university professor and successful book author, has lured him out of a safe hourly life, provided him with work as his secretary, and become more and more of an intellectual foster father to him. Tom is fascinated by the older man's dazzling charisma, but does not realize his role as a son until he has long since become Oedipus: he is having an affair with Camilla, Eric's wife. When he ends this dilemma and wants to leave her, she implores their love and calls Tom the only bright spot of her otherwise messed-up married life. For Camilla is dependent on Eric in every way, financially as much as in her social role. Her emotional dependence evokes only more contempt from Eric and further lust for his wife's humiliation. As enlightened and politically precise as Eric pretends to be in his books, he subtly and cruelly plays the people of his world against each other.
Torn between love and loathing for these two people, Tom is torn. He wants to end the situation, but is persuaded by Eric to take a last working vacation together in their house in South Tyrol. Camilla accompanies the two. Here Eric reveals that he has known about the secret relationship of the other two for a long time. Tom is unsettled. What is Eric up to? (Source: Film Catalog Screenings A6 HFF FIL-08)
Tom works as a secretary for the successful book author and university professor Eric and has succumbed to him in an Oedipal love-hate relationship. At the same time, he has an affair with Eric's wife Camilla, whom Eric treats with subtle cruelty. When they go on a working vacation together in the South Tyrolean mountains, it becomes apparent that Eric has long known about the affair and is playing his own game with him. (Source: HFF Film Database)