The only German, and one of the few women in competition, Maren Ade brings that most oxymoronic of films to Cannes: a German comedy. Yet to call it a comedy is misleading for it is a story about family, relationships and love. Coming in at a running time of 2 hours and 42 minutes, Ade is having a bit of a laugh, but if you can survive the length you’ll be rewarded.
The film starts in a small town in Germany, where we meet Winfried (Peter Simonischek). He’s a bit of a joker, with false teeth and other fun accessories always at the ready. In the first few scenes, we watch this jovial bear of a man lumbering from his home to work (he’s a music teacher at a school) and on to his mother’s before heading off for drinks at his ex-wife’s. There we meet his daughter Ines (Sandra Huller), an uptight businesswoman, her phone clamped to her ear at all times, her business suit incongruous in the relaxed family setting. Dad is perplexed at his daughter’s no-nonsense attitude and decides to surprise her with a visit to Bucharest, where she is based with her multinational company.
In the space of this weekend, the rift between the two widens as his antics exasperate her. As he heads back to Germany, she heaves a sigh of relief and gets back to her world of networking and socialising with her superficial, materialistic friends. But dad has a surprise in store. He has decided to remain in Bucharest incognito, with his ubiquitous gnashers and ridiculous wig. For the next few days, his alter ego Toni Erdmann strives to brighten up Ines’s life and instil a little humour and humanity into it.
As well as directing, Ade also wrote the screenplay. The film could have been cut had she avoided the many work scenes that provide far too much detail. We get that Ines is busy and struggling to stay in the same pool as the sharks around her without seeing the fact repeated. And to be fair, Toni can be more annoying than funny. However great your sense of humour is, having your dad show up at work, sitting on whoopee cushions or handcuffing you to him before a meeting would drive the most fun-loving son or daughter round the bend. But Ade adeptly shows how these two extremes of character have to find a compromise or call it a day.
Huller is fabulous as the po-faced daughter. As her father brings down her defences and we see Ines begin to fall apart, Huller shows a woman on the verge of a breakdown as her icy veneer cracks. When she sings Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All, she earned a deserved round of applause from the Cannes audience. But it is in the final scenes that she is particularly outstanding and she is surely a contender for the best actress gong. As her goofy dad, Simonischek is both infuriating and absolutely charming, a soft and kindly foil to Huller’s sharp edges and sarcasm.
This is a tender and funny film, which suffers from being overly long, but Ade is a skilled craftswoman and gifted screenwriter. I look forward to her next movie, but just hope that it comes in at under two hours.
