Maren Ade
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Connections, in both directions
Toni Erdmann is a whacked out, heartwarming-yet-moderately perverse combination of My Father the Hero and Y Tu Mamá Tambien , a father-daughter tragi-comedy that’s also a comment on the generation gap and the broken promises of globalization.
Ade delivers laughs in spades — there is something of the deadpan absurdity of A Swedish Love Story director Roy Andersson in her worldview — and creates a malleable tone that can take in a man dressed as a tree and always feel real.
In a year where masters from Paul Verhoeven to Cristi Puiu have invoked Buñuel, Ade’s absurdist brunch gathering might actually come the closest to the Spanish master’s mixture of satirical, carnivalesque glee and purple-bruised humanity—it’s the beggar’s banquet from Viridiana (1961) and the suffocating social obligation of The Exterminating Angel (1962) rolled into one, literally stripped naked, and then topped off with an intrusion from a creature from another time, place, and dimension, one whose arrival has been hinted at all along, and whose fundamental, what-the-fuck incongruity is sturdily supported by the context of absolute realism that Ade builds for two-and-a-half hours.
That said, it’s actually possible to distill the life philosophy practiced by elementary school teacher Winfried to a Patch Adams -ish level: he too believes that laughter is the best medicine.
The movie’s most impressive trick is that while Winfried’s stated philosophy is “Don’t lose the humor,” his disguises never descend into a Patch Adams-type aggressive whimsy.
In a year where masters from Paul Verhoeven to Cristi Puiu have invoked Buñuel, Ade’s absurdist brunch gathering might actually come the closest to the Spanish master’s mixture of satirical, carnivalesque glee and purple-bruised humanity—it’s the beggar’s banquet from Viridiana (1961) and the suffocating social obligation of The Exterminating Angel (1962) rolled into one, literally stripped naked, and then topped off with an intrusion from a creature from another time, place, and dimension, one whose arrival has been hinted at all along, and whose fundamental, what-the-fuck incongruity is sturdily supported by the context of absolute realism that Ade builds for two-and-a-half hours.
The basic plot formula—a shaggy-dog outsider lets some air into a stale bourgeois life—is a familiar staple from Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) to Paul Mazursky’s yuppie Los Angelino remake Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), though the film that I thought of most during Ade’s was the (significantly funnier) 2012 Adam Sandler vehicle That’s My Boy.
The basic plot formula—a shaggy-dog outsider lets some air into a stale bourgeois life—is a familiar staple from Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) to Paul Mazursky’s yuppie Los Angelino remake Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), though the film that I thought of most during Ade’s was the (significantly funnier) 2012 Adam Sandler vehicle That’s My Boy.
In Winfried’s go-to bag of tricks is a set of false protruding teeth, and as the Toni alter ego, he wears them along with an ill-fitting suit and a disheveled wig, resembling what Michael Keaton’s Betelgeuse would look like 30 years after Beetlejuice’s release.
He incorporates himself into her corporate existence as life coach Toni Erdmann, wearing a suit and shaggy wig that make him look unsettlingly like Tommy Wiseau from The Room, which is surely unintentional (but adds another layer of meaning for those in the know).
Toni Erdmann is a whacked out, heartwarming-yet-moderately perverse combination of My Father the Hero and Y Tu Mamá Tambien , a father-daughter tragi-comedy that’s also a comment on the generation gap and the broken promises of globalization.
But rarer is the memorable movie that portrays a dad and his adult daughter: “ On Golden Pond ,” both versions of “Father of the Bride,” “ Coyote Ugly ,” maybe “ Chinatown ” and “ Taken ” if you stretch matters a bit.
The basic plot formula—a shaggy-dog outsider lets some air into a stale bourgeois life—is a familiar staple from Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) to Paul Mazursky’s yuppie Los Angelino remake Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), though the film that I thought of most during Ade’s was the (significantly funnier) 2012 Adam Sandler vehicle That’s My Boy.
That roughly describes the setup for the Sandler joint “That’s My Boy.”
But rarer is the memorable movie that portrays a dad and his adult daughter: “ On Golden Pond ,” both versions of “Father of the Bride,” “ Coyote Ugly ,” maybe “ Chinatown ” and “ Taken ” if you stretch matters a bit.
Even a tryst with her lover Tim (Trystan Pütter, "War Horse," "Phoenix") is cool, a woman outwardly 'having it all' with no real, human connection.
Much like Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann (2016), Trier and his collaborating scribe Eskil Vogt mine what appears to have been the spiritual break-up between a father and daughter, each unhappy in their own ways but refusing to acknowledge how similar they are to one another.
Individual scenes are staged to recall the likes of Mrs. Doubtfire and Liar Liar, but it's Ade's depiction of corporate homogeneity that feels too familiar for a while, defined by picky eaters, social snobs, business card-swapping networkers, and ugly-chic poolside bars.
He looks like Neil Young in a remake of Reservoir Dogs.
Even then, that was illustrated earlier during a sequence of cake eating that aims to surpass There’s Something About Mary and American Pie for visual gross out humour – a scene which veers the film’s tone way off course, for the sake of a broad gag.
Even then, that was illustrated earlier during a sequence of cake eating that aims to surpass There’s Something About Mary and American Pie for visual gross out humour – a scene which veers the film’s tone way off course, for the sake of a broad gag.
Yet Toni Erdmann is often as an acute exploration of business anxieties as we've seen since Michael Clayton, depicting the world of nervous sweat, double-talk and ugly pantyhose.