Toni Erdmannn
This film is billed as a comedy. Yes, there are moments that are extremely funny. But mostly Toni Erdmannis a subtle meditation on the relationship between a parent and a child—here a father and daughter. The father is introduced from the first scene as a practical prankster. A few scenes later the daughter is introduced at a celebratory gathering of the mother who has a new partner. As the father arrives the daughter is in the garden where she pretends to make important phone calls for her consulting job.
While the father seems to have never had much of a career, the daughter appears to overcompensate this by working non-stop even a family gathering. The father is concerned that the daughter is sacrificing her happiness for success in the competitive world of management consulting. And so he decides to visit her for a few days in Bucharest where she is on assignment. The film slowly unveils more and more about the father and daughter. We are drawn in because we want to know: What happened between the two that their relationship now seems so awkward? Why does the father believe he has permission to simply show up at the daughter’s workplace and play practical jokes on her colleagues and friends? And then the director and writer Maren Ade unleashes a number of extremely funny scenes where the father impersonates the role the German ambassador and gradually gets the daughter to lose her stiffness and she starts playing along. If you want to see a clever and gentle film about the complexities of family relationships, this is a film for you. You will laugh a few times but mainly think about your own family constellations.