It’s a film that says a lot about the virtues of not taking life to seriously, and how good it really is to occasionally throw caution to the wind and be weird for no other reason than to freak out the normals. I’m 100% down with this notion, although I’m not one for false teeth and wigs. Call me boring.
There are scenes that are riotously funny in their awkwardness – full frontal nudity among work colleagues – and one scene which displays one character’s emotional distance has a level of gross-out humour one would expect in an American Pie film. Strange, to say the least.
Part of the strength of the film’s writing comes from the fact that as the narrative unfold, you go back and forth between deciding if it’s Winifried/Toni (Austrian Peter Simonischek, in a fearless performance) or Ines (Sandra Huller; note perfect, as well as fearless-plus) has everything more together, and various scenes and sequences present either one of them as being on the precipice – or well into – the throes of a mental breakdown. But the whole thing is done with noble intent, foresight and general affection by writer-director Maren Ade. It takes turns you don’t expect and sends a finely tuned message by its end about the value of maintaining relationships between parents and their children, and the value of letting go and not taking things too seriously.
It does meander, however, and at a very long 162 minutes it stretches the friendship – large swathes of the films narrative don’t actually add much to it – it could be a European thing, it could be a Germanic thing. Or it could just be a ‘I need a more disciplined editor’ thing because this would be a far superior film if an hour was cut from its running time. Much of the film exists without music; it is almost completely rendered solely with diegetic sound; the one memorable piece of music comes from the film’s third act – Ines belts out a painfully awkward, but at the same time fearless rendition of Whitney Houston’s ‘The Greatest Love of All’.
The themes are universal, beyond the setting and nationalities of the characters – so much so that a US remake is in the works, which would see Jack Nicholson return to the screen for the first time in something like a decade – the guy was waiting for the right part, and here it is. The notion of seeing him in an English language remake opposite Kristen Wiig is something most definitely worth anticipating.
Toni Erdmann is fresh and original; a heartfelt and emotionally honest comedic drama (dramatic comedy?) from one of the more unlikely sources – who knew the Germans could be off kilter and kooky?