Toni Erdmann (2016)
Directed by Maren Ade
Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.
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24 films that influenced Toni Erdmann
What critics say influenced Toni Erdmann
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.
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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.
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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.