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.
Please note that this film is in German, English and Romanian, with Dutch subtitles.
Written by MV