Exploring odd family relationships
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TONI Erdmann” is a hard film to love, but that might be the point. The German movie from the clearly talented and incisive writer/director Maren Ade seems like it should be a comedy — the lightly plotted character study is about a father trying to introduce some chaos into his adult daughter’s overworked life — but it’s far too cutting and uncomfortable to generate much joy.
It all hinges on how you view the father, Winifried, played by actor Peter Simonischek. Winifried is a hearty-looking man, likely in his 60s, who has a mop of unruly gray hair and a penchant for what might generously be described as pranks. He keeps a set of fake teeth in his shirt pocket which he’ll pop in from time to time when he wants to take on one of his personas.
He’ll do this with delivery people, strangers, his mother and his extended family.
Strangers don’t quite know what to do with him, and his family just kind of disregard his oddities through clenched teeth. Both kinds of interactions can be almost painful to watch and even after two viewings I can’t get a handle on how the movie wants us to see him, especially once he decides to concentrate all of his efforts on his 30-something daughter, Ines (Sandra Huller).
After seeing Ines, serious, stressed and tethered to her phone at a family gathering, Winifried decides to surprise her with a visit to Bucharest, where her consulting job has stranded her. These two might as well be strangers, and Winified’s presence is a disruptive one in Ines’ highly structured life.
As he tries harder to get her to lighten up, she seems to get even more tense and stressed.
Eventually Winifried tells Ines he’s leaving, only to come back and surprise her once more, this time as Toni Erdmann — fake teeth, crazy black wig and all. And Toni becomes Ines’ companion, from the club to the countryside and at other random places.
The everyday relationship between adult parents and their adult children is one that the movies don’t often explore. It’s refreshing to just have that reality be the basis for a character study, minus the tragedy, and at 162 minutes “Toni Erdmann” certainly gives this experiment room to breathe.
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