Film Review: Toni Erdmann

Director: Maren Ade

Producers: Maren Ade, Jonas Dornbach, Janine Jackowski, Michel Merkt

Cast: Peter Simonischeck, Sandra Hüller, Ingrid Bisu, Vlad Ivanov, Trystan Pütter, Lucy Russell, Hadewych Minis, Michael Wittenborn

Running time: 2h 42min

            Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann is a hilariously human observation of the complex relationship between a father and daughter. This film serves out everything you could possibly want from a two hour and forty-five minute Germany comedy: nude parties, existentialism and a nine-foot tall furry Kukeri costume.

This film masters both subtle and overt comedy with the actors’ well attuned timing and some bright moments of full-on ridiculousness, including some impromptu Whitney Houston karaoke and one of the best nude scene in cinema. Ade creates beautiful moments of comedy through the tension of everyday experiences. The pace of the film provides a wonderfully realistic experience: there are big, funny moments and crushingly depressing lows but also less active times, giving you an opportunity to marinate on the characters and their experiences. The ebb and flow of this film gives it a life of its own and allows you to really feel the characters evolving.

            Toni Erdmann is a persona put on by Winfried Conradi, played by Peter Mimonischeck, in order to get the attention of his workaholic daughter, Ines, played by Sandra Hüller. After feeling snubbed by his brief visit from his daughter in Germany, Winfried spontaneously decides to visit Ines at her office in Bucharest, Romania. Upon seeing that Ines life is not going as well as she always claimed, he returns under the guise of Toni Erdmann. Knowing that the only way to be a part of Ines’ business-first world is to infiltrate it, Winfried suits up in his trusty fake teeth, an ill-fitting suit and a shaggy red wig. Winfried’s intrusion on Ines life is a source of frustration for her, but she finally comes around to her father’s more relaxed and silly lifestyle. When Ines is finally at the end of her patience, she and Winfried share a touching moment in a park wearing nothing but a bath robe and a giant furry Kukeri suit, respectively.

Ade has Simonischeck’s character put on the conspicuously ridiculous persona of Toni Erdmann to show how much of our own public identity is a performance. Most of Ines’ job is about making the right connections and saying the right things. After her first big presentation, Ines Skypes in with her business coach, hoping to work on her “body language” as though her unconscious movements were something that could be trained. Ines coworkers only care about the bottom line and they are wiling to go as far as to fire a menial worker for a joke or do unspeakable things to a cupcake just to close a deal. Seeing how draining her lifestyle has become, Ines eventually succumbs to her father’s silly hijinks. Toni’s antics wear her down and then build her back up again. The father-daughter team are at their funniest when working together. Speaking in their private and silent language they introduce Toni into the fast-paced world of business consulting. With Toni around, Ines is finally able to see exactly how ridiculous her lifestyle is and begins to unhinge a little more each day. Ines finally throws in the towel for her high-paced business lifestyle at her birthday brunch, which had become more of team-building exercise than a social gathering. Unable to zip up her tight birthday dress on her own or put on her high heels, Ines decides to just open the door naked. She suggests, in total Toni Erdmann fashion, that she is in fact holding a naked brunch (for team-building, of course) and anyone who showed up with clothes on was not invited. Each ring of the doorbell ensued fits of laughter from the audience because it promised another terribly awkward moment of tension for her colleagues that Ines handled with the quiet grace of a woman who just doesn’t care anymore.

Ade builds her characters around tropes in cinema but succeeds in pushing past those stereotypes by giving them creating such rich and odd personalities. Ines is more than just the the overworked childless career woman and Winfried is more than the silly, out-of-touch old dad. They’re both lost souls looking to sort out some meaning in their lives. Winfried knows that Ines is not as happy as she always reports and after seeing the effects of her high pressure job, he realizes this is no way for his daughter to live. Winfried even goes as far as to ask Ines what she even lives for and in reply she asks if he himself has any plans in life beyond, “slipping fart cushions under people”. Ines and Winfried share an equal and opposite disappointment for each other but eventually find a mutual understanding through their hijinks. As they both struggle to find some meaning in life, Ade seems to suggest that maybe the most important part of life is just being silly.

This film hit every cord of human emotion with both its subtlety and its blatant hilarity. By the end I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, cringe, or call my dad.