Due to a broken getaway car, three Russian jewel thieves are forced to take shelter in an empty Viennese coffee house. They knock out the waiter and call their fourth accomplice. Ten minutes until the new car arrives! Unfortunately two policemen enter the café and take a seat. As the only people present, the villains are mistaken for waiters – with fatal consequences.
Evading trivial clichés, “Carnival of Waiters” pays homage to the tradition of the Viennese coffee house in the form of a crime-comedy. The coffee house is portrayed as a site where cultural displeasure is countered with the pleasures of caffeine, where existential meet idealistic problems, where freewill meets inevitable fate and lawbreakers meet its guardians – encounters which are all pervaded by an aura of transience.
