AllMovie

A heartwarming human interest story focusing on a young 13-year-old boy insecure about his father's affections, Lieber Vater is set in a small town in West Germany where the father of the title (Hubert Kronlachner) works as a baker. He is an outgoing man who admires beautiful women, loves classical music, a good meal, and visits to Vienna. One day when the son sees him with an attractive artist's model, he develops a deep-seated anxiety about whether or not his father will be abandoning him. So this time when the baker travels to Vienna, his son takes off in search of him, all the while trying to dissimulate the reason for his trip to strangers he meets. It is this journey to Vienna and his stay in a family hotel, waiting for his father to return from a temporary absence, that form the core of this slow-paced but kind-hearted narrative.