The ’10s: Toni Erdmann
A German tragicomedy that is as bittersweet as it is hilarious, about a father who has become estranged from his daughter, a tough businesswoman working for a consultancy firm in Bucharest.
Winfried, a 65-year-old music teacher – a joker who loves pranks and is invariably fiddling about with a whoopee cushion at family gatherings – has barely any contact with his daughter Ines. In a last-ditch attempt to reconnect with his workaholic daughter, Winfried takes on the guise of Toni Erdmann and – complete with a wig and false teeth – infiltrates his daughter’s management consultancy world.
German filmmaker Maren Ade makes brilliant use of comic techniques we usually associate with the British: embarrassment and substitute shame. So there’s plenty of painful humour in the superbly performed Toni Erdmann, but beneath all the jokes and kidding around lies a moving film about parents and children, loneliness and time slipping away.
Fun fact: Toni Erdmann was also screened ten years ago, when Lumière moved to the Bassin.
Please note that this film is in German, English and Romanian, with Dutch subtitles.
Written by MV