Review: Toni Erdmann

Toni Erdmann (15)

Germany/Austria/Romania 2016 162 mins Subtitles Dir: Maren Ade  Cast: Peter Simonischek, Sandra Hüller

There are some foreign-language films that are impossible to watch without imagining how awful the American remakes would be. German writer/director Maren Ade’s Oscar nominated Toni Erdmann is a case in point. The tale of an estranged father attempting to reconnect with his workaholic daughter, it could easily descend into a feast of fake emotion, pat homilies, cute odd couple bonding and warm fuzzies. In Ade’s hands, however, it mutates into something much more bizarre and affecting. It’s never entirely convincing as drama, but certainly delivers on the comedy of embarrassment front and carries an understated message about sexism in the workplace.

The tone is set during the opening scene, in which a postman comes to the door of Michael McDonald lookalike Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) bearing a parcel. Conradi pretends it’s for his brother Toni, who’s just got out of jail for sending parcel bombs, and goes to get him. He then returns in a dressing gown, wearing shades and comedy false teeth, pretending to be ‘Toni’. The postie just shuffles his feet and seems embarrassed by this obvious, not-especially-funny ruse. We then learn that divorced Winfried lives alone with his elderly dog and has little contact with his high-flying business consultant daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller), who’s currently in Bucharest advising a giant oil company on how to sack much of its workforce. So he packs his bag of jolly japes (teeth, shaggy wig, whoopee cushion, etc) and pays her an unannounced weekend visit.

At first, it’s hard to believe these two people are actually related. He’s an irritating prankster with a mischievous grin and a penchant for stupid practical jokes. She’s a brittle, harassed, pale and humourless executive who grins and bears her boorish male colleagues’ casual sexism as the price to be paid for admission to their world. Needless to say, she’s not exactly overjoyed to see the embarrassing old bugger, especially as business negotiations have reached a crucial point and her professional reputation is on the line. Nonetheless, Ines invites her father along to schmoozing events, where he slips into his ‘Toni Erdmann’ persona and tells her clients that he’s thinking of hiring a substitute daughter because he never gets to see her.

Ade shoots the whole thing in such an artless, hand-held style that initially you might be forgiven for thinking you’re watching a Dardennes brothers social realist drama. But stage actors Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller (best known here for the superb 2006 exorcism flick Requiem) are both on magnificent form, making the long-suffering father/daughter relationship totally believable and teasing out its undercurrent of sadness. Winfried clearly thinks his daughter is unhappy and unfulfilled, but when he asks what makes her life worth living she pointedly throws the question straight back at him. Undeterred, he goes on to demand: “Are you really human?”

At nigh-on three hours, Toni Erdmann has all the potential to become quite a bum-number, but the slow-burning build up proves necessary to lay the groundwork for an extraordinary, high-wire third act that some will still find difficult to swallow as it takes a turn for the Lars Von Trier and veers dangerously close to the ‘laughter is the best medicine’ school of banal philosophising. That said, there’s no question that this is highly entertaining, with plenty of watch-through-your-fingers moments, copious nudity and a barnstorming karaoke performance of Whitney Houston’s cover of The Greatest Love of All. Be warned, however, that you may never be able to eat a petit four again.