Country: Germany
Director: Maren Ade
Time: 2 hours and 42 minutes
What It Elicits: Complicated families, whimsical absurdity, and Bulgarian kukeri costumes
Where Can I Get It: Mubi (w/subscription) and Amazon Prime ($3.99 to rent)
Toni Erdmann is wickedly funny. At the same time, it also manages to be a film about many things: philosophies of life, the EU, the consulting industry, ambition, inter-generational ambivalence, economic integration and its costs, and, mostly, father-daughter relationships. The list could go on. On some level, given the movie’s duration, this makes sense. Clocking in at an easy—truly, a pretty rapid—two hours and forty two minutes, Toni Erdmann delights in upending expectations and exploring the nuance latent within a certain type of familial strife borne of bemusement, cringe worthy acting out, and misaligned notions of what it means to be in the world. True to its sensitive nature, its view of reconciliation remains nuanced and pragmatic. The plot surrounds Winfried, a retired music teacher and idiosyncratic lover of larks, and his serious, career-oriented daughter Ines who works for a global consulting firm. Parents beware: reaction formation abounds. Ines, charged with leading an outsourcing project in Romania, moves temporarily to Bucharest. Her father, fresh off the death of his beloved dog, decides to join her unprompted and undesired. Hijinks ensue as Winfried insinuates himself into both Ines’ professional and personal life, intriguing under the false name Toni Erdmann, compete with a disguise utilizing a particularly choice pair of fake teeth. At one point, miffed at Ines’ coldness in the face of his surprise appearance in Bucharest, he notes, “I’ve hired a substitute daughter.” To which Ines parries, “Great, so she can call you on your birthday.”
Two qualities—attention and understanding or, rather, attention leading to understanding—form the central axis around which the drama circulates. Each character, flawed and captured by their own preconceptions about what it means to function in the world, comes close to appreciating the other even if no sweeping union ever emerges. Naturally understanding comes with growing pains, moments of both hilarity and awkwardness, and, perhaps, the acknowledgment that not all relationships can achieve the blissful merger of purpose we expect of them. Indeed, Maren Ade’s beautiful film offers such a powerful portrait of its central characters because it does not foist onto them the common tropes of familial consortium—“adulthood” appears the preserve of Ines, while Winfried’s acting out resemble a certain free spiritedness bordering on the juvenile. Yet, finally, each has something to teach the other and each has something to learn…perhaps like all of us.
Go Down the Rabbit Hole With:
Maren Ade — Everyone Else (2009)
Hans Weingartner — The Edukators (2004)