Toni Erdmann (2016) by Maren Ade - Review

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by Maren Ade

grade: 7.5

Toni Erdmann is the film one does not expect. Is it, perhaps, a comedy? A drama? The story of a tender but complex father-daughter relationship? A deep social investigation in which we are shown how capitalism seems to have definitively taken over our lives? Probably, each of these elements.

Father and daughter

Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller. Two great actors who, in one way or another, have made the headlines in recent days. Prematurely deceased he, acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival she, the two artists, after an already long and commendable career, gained attention (thus finally becoming world-famous) thanks to the feature film Toni Erdmann, directed by young German director Maren Ade in 2016 and presented in competition at the 69th Cannes Film Festival (where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize).

Toni Erdmann is, in fact, the film one does not expect. Is it, perhaps, a comedy? A drama? The story of a tender but complex father-daughter relationship? A deep social investigation in which we are shown how capitalism seems to have definitively taken over our lives? Probably, each of these elements. Much more complex, layered and symbolic than it may initially seem, this important feature by Maren Ade was a sensation in its time, giving life to almost unique characters, further enhanced by excellent acting performances.

And it is precisely a careful and anything but simple work with actors that is the basis of Toni Erdmann. Here, in fact, is staged the story of Winfried (Simonischek), a retired man who lives alone with his little dog and who, just to spend his time, gives piano lessons and enjoys organising all kinds of pranks, passionate as he is about costumes. One day the man decides to visit his daughter Ines (Hüller), who lives in Bucharest, works as a consultant for a major company and dreams of one day being transferred to Shanghai. The man firmly believes that his daughter, who by now has no free time because of her job, has lost her sense of humour and to this end, once in Bucharest, he invents the bizarre character of Toni Erdmann, who wears dentures and a wig and pretends to be a business coach, constantly embarrassing Ines.

“Are you a human being?” asks Winfried to his daughter the moment he has had a chance to observe her life. And it is precisely this that is mainly staged in Toni Erdmann: the death of humanity alongside a prevailing capitalism that has long since stopped considering the human being as such. The same capitalism against which Winfried’s generation has always railed. The same capitalism that is able to make people lose sight of the importance of true values and that causes people to be unscrupulously dismissed and image and appearance to constantly play a central role.

In this sense, Toni Erdmann contrasts strongly with the glamorous world in which his daughter lives, inventing an identity capable of undermining the identity and every certainty of others. Everything is paradox, everything is illusion. And even if Winfried himself cannot claim to have found the right key to finally living happily, in his own way, by inventing the character of Toni Erdmann or even transforming himself into a sort of totem completely covered in fur, he can help Ines observe things from a different perspective. And so, finally, Ines herself will realise that it is worth making room for her father in her life (the scene in which she jokingly wears the man’s dentures is particularly tender and delicate).

A film that is anything but simple, Toni Erdmann. A film that focuses on a stark realism, further accentuated by a long (but necessary) running time and by the almost total absence of music (except, of course, for the purely diegetic music), aiming at the substance of things by skilfully playing with comic, illusion and dissimulation. A film that addresses practically all of us, in a world where everyone seems to know exactly what is the right way to live and relate to others.