• 10 Reasons to Remember…
  • About
  • For One Week Only
  • Happy Birthday
  • Monthly Roundup
  • Old-Time Crime
  • Other Posts
  • Poster of the Week
  • Question of the Week
  • Reviews
  • Trailers

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: Maren Ade

Toni Erdmann (2016)

06 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bucharest, Business consultant, Comedy, Drama, Father/daughter relationship, Germany, Maren Ade, Peter Simonischek, Review, Sandra Hüller, The Greatest Love of All

D: Maren Ade / 162m

Cast: Sandra Hüller, Peter Simonischek, Michael Wittenborn, Thomas Loibl, Trystan Pütter, Ingrid Bisu, Hadewych Minis, Lucy Russell, Victoria Cocias, Vlad Ivanov

Winfried Conradi (Simonischek) is a retired music teacher with too much time on his hands and not enough to do. To make his life more “fun” he plays jokes on the people around him. He’s harmless though, and anyway, the people he knows are used to him and his behaviour. The only person he doesn’t see is his daughter, Ines (Hüller), who is working for a firm of business consultants in Bucharest. When she arrives home unexpectedly, Winfried gains a suspicion that Ines isn’t very happy; she pretends to be on her phone rather than socialise with her family. Following the death of his dog, Willi, Winfried decides to pay Ines a visit himself.

He waits for sometime at her company’s offices, until she sends an assistant, Anca (Bisu) to look after him until the evening, when she invites him to a reception for the CEO of a German oil company, Henneberg (Wittenborn); it’s his company that she’s hoping to secure a lucrative contract with. But Henneberg ignores her, and pays more attention to Winfried. At a club afterwards, Henneberg continues by patronising Ines and mocking Winfried. As time goes on, Ines finds having her father around too much of a distraction; the final straw is when he causes her to miss an important business meeting. Feeling unappreciated and unwanted, Winfried decides to go home.

A few days later, Ines is meeting her friends Steph (Russell) and Tatjana (Minis) at a bar when a man asks if he can share his champagne with them. It’s clearly Winfried wearing a wig and false teeth (and calling himself Toni Erdmann), but Ines says nothing, even when he claims to be a life coach. In the days that follow, Winfried appears at her work and insinuates himself into the company. Ines at first believes he’s trying to ruin her life, but strangely, he has some good ideas and she begins to take him with her when she has any meetings. He also goes with her on a company night out, but Winfried is dismayed to see that he’s been right all along, and Ines isn’t happy. To make up for this, he takes her to a Romanian family’s Easter party, where he gets her to sing Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love of All. But this brings up conflicting feelings in Ines, and later, at a party she’s hosting at her apartment, a problem with her zip leads to a decision that will be far-reaching in more ways than one.

Justifiably nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars, Toni Erdmann is the kind of movie that looks daunting when you first approach it – a German comedy/drama running two hours and forty-two minutes? – but which draws you in and keeps you spellbound from beginning to end. Thanks to a perceptive, well-constructed script by writer/director Ade, it’s a movie that confounds expectations and proves engaging throughout, and it does so by creating two entirely credible and relatable central characters in worn-down Ines and her aging hippy father. When we first see them together, there’s a definite distance between them: Winfried didn’t even know she was going to be visiting. And disappointed, he leaves early. But he’s seen enough to know that he has to make an effort to help his daughter.

It’s this notion, that a parent can still feel responsible for a child even when they’re an adult, is what drives the movie, and what makes it so engaging. Winfried’s idea of helping Ines may be unorthodox, weird even, but it’s also heartfelt and sincere. And he’s not put off when his trying to help her as himself doesn’t work. He adopts a different approach, and discovers that his alter ego is far more effective as a father figure than he is as an actual parent. It’s a lovely twist, and one that keeps the movie from becoming too predictable as Ines struggles to make sense of what her father is doing, and why. And Winfried’s task is made all the more difficult thanks to Ines’ work ambitions, which are being hampered by her boss, Gerald (Loibl). While she tries harder than anyone else to capture the oil company contract, she also has to deal with the casual sexism that exists in her workplace. It’s because she feels she has to put up with all this that makes Winfried’s job all the harder; he has to get her to loosen up.

Ines herself is the movie’s real focus, and she’s one of the most well-developed, and credible, female characters in recent movie memory. Ambitious and yet unsure of those ambitions, in a relationship with colleague Tim (Pütter) that meets her physical needs but not her emotional ones, and caught up in an after-work party lifestyle that makes her feel uncomfortable, Ines is brought to life by Hüller in a performance that is honest (at one point nakedly so), scrupulously authentic, and hugely impressive. When it all gets too much and her defences begin to come tumbling down, Hüller’s portrayal of Ines remains as tightly contained as it’s been throughout, but she adds emotional layers that haven’t been there, layers that provide depth and help explain just how she’s coming to terms with the changes to her life that have long been delayed.

Ines’ relationship with her father is many things: exasperating, dismaying, mortifying, but still a loving relationship, and Ade adds a coda to the movie that perfectly relates the feelings they’ve had for each other all along. In many ways it’s a brave movie, mixing comedy and drama to surprisingly good effect given the melancholy feel the movie has as a whole, and it isn’t afraid to paint either of its two main characters in a negative light. It’s also painstakingly directed by Ade, whose use of space and her placement of the characters in that space hasn’t really been given its due since the movie debuted at Cannes last year. Aided tremendously by DoP Patrick Orth and editor Heike Parplies, Ade has put together a movie that’s as visually arresting as it is intellectually and emotionally stimulating. It’s a beautifully composed movie, with imagery that lingers in the mind long after you’ve viewed it.

Beaten to the Oscar by The Salesman (2016) (no mix-up there), Toni Erdmann is an extraordinary look at the relationship between a father and a daughter that deserves all the awards it’s received, and which channels poignancy and hope through that relationship in ways that are humorous and dramatic, affecting and remarkable, and striking and challenging – and all at the same time. It’s a tremendous achievement by Ade, a movie that quietly amazes as it rewards its audience with two faultless performances, a scenario that never quite goes in the direction you think it will, and which throws in – unexpectedly – a Bulgarian kukeri for good measure. Powerful and appealing, this is a modern classic, pure and simple.

Rating: 9/10 – you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be sad, you’ll be lifted up, but you definitely won’t be bored, as Toni Erdmann is a triumph of character building and emphatic storytelling; near flawless in its execution, the movie’s complex emotional shading and refreshing visual style combine with various other carefully applied elements to make a movie that’s both thought-provoking and entertaining.

Advertisements

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Print
  • Email
  • Google

Like this:

Like Loading...

Blog Stats

  • 225,230 hits

Recent Posts

  • Batman (1943) – Chapter 7: The Phoney Doctor
  • The Tenth Victim (1965)
  • A Brief Word About Cineworld Unlimited
  • Million Dollar Legs (1932)
  • Paterno (2018)

Top Posts & Pages

  • A Brief Word About Cineworld Unlimited
    A Brief Word About Cineworld Unlimited
  • Reviews
    Reviews
  • The Dish (2000)
    The Dish (2000)
  • Mini-Review: Jersey Shore Massacre (2014)
    Mini-Review: Jersey Shore Massacre (2014)
  • Columbus Circle (2012)
    Columbus Circle (2012)
  • July Is Catch Up Month
    July Is Catch Up Month
  • Mini-Review: Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)
    Mini-Review: Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)
  • Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
    Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
  • Showdown in Manila (2016)
    Showdown in Manila (2016)
  • Every Reason to Forget (2018)
    Every Reason to Forget (2018)
Follow thedullwoodexperiment on WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • Fast Film Reviews
  • The Film Blog
  • vinnieh
  • All Things Movies UK
  • Police Entertainment Network
  • movieblort
  • Dave Examines Movies
  • Let's Go To The Movies
  • Movie Reviews 101
  • ThatMomentIn
  • Dan the Man's Movie Reviews
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • Reflections
  • Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys)

Archives

  • April 2018 (21)
  • March 2018 (31)
  • February 2018 (25)
  • January 2018 (30)
  • December 2017 (30)
  • November 2017 (27)
  • October 2017 (27)
  • September 2017 (26)
  • August 2017 (32)
  • July 2017 (32)
  • June 2017 (30)
  • May 2017 (29)
  • April 2017 (29)
  • March 2017 (30)
  • February 2017 (27)
  • January 2017 (32)
  • December 2016 (30)
  • November 2016 (28)
  • October 2016 (30)
  • September 2016 (27)
  • August 2016 (30)
  • July 2016 (30)
  • June 2016 (31)
  • May 2016 (34)
  • April 2016 (30)
  • March 2016 (30)
  • February 2016 (28)
  • January 2016 (35)
  • December 2015 (34)
  • November 2015 (31)
  • October 2015 (31)
  • September 2015 (34)
  • August 2015 (31)
  • July 2015 (33)
  • June 2015 (12)
  • May 2015 (31)
  • April 2015 (32)
  • March 2015 (30)
  • February 2015 (37)
  • January 2015 (39)
  • December 2014 (34)
  • November 2014 (34)
  • October 2014 (36)
  • September 2014 (25)
  • August 2014 (29)
  • July 2014 (29)
  • June 2014 (28)
  • May 2014 (23)
  • April 2014 (21)
  • March 2014 (42)
  • February 2014 (38)
  • January 2014 (29)
  • December 2013 (28)
  • November 2013 (34)
  • October 2013 (4)
Advertisements

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Fast Film Reviews

for those who like their movie reviews short and sweet

The Film Blog

The official blog of everything in film

vinnieh

Movie reviews and anything else that comes to mind

All Things Movies UK

Movie Reviews and Original Articles

Police Entertainment Network

Just some cops talking movies and more

movieblort

No-nonsense, unqualified, uneducated & spoiler free movie reviews.

Dave Examines Movies

Interpreting the Stars

Let's Go To The Movies

Film and Theatre Lover!

Movie Reviews 101

Reviews, Trailers, Top5's, Star Focus

ThatMomentIn

Movie Reviews & More

Dan the Man's Movie Reviews

All my aimless thoughts, ideas, and ramblings, all packed into one site!

Sunset Boulevard

Writings of a Cinephile

Reflections

Film Blog. Film Reviews. World Cinema. Independent Film.

Jordan and Eddie (The Movie Guys)

Australian based film fan - sharing unqualified and unbiased cinematic opinions

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: