German film-maker Maren Ade has produced, directed and written this unusual piece of cinema.
Billed in some circles as a comedy, Toni Erdmann is anything but. It sits quite solidly in the drama-genre, and its few lightly humorous moments do not detract from its main purpose as an exploration of family relationships.
Ines (Sandra Huller), is a seemingly successful consultant in the oil industry. Although from Germany, she is currently based in Bucharest working in the burgeoning Rumanian resources sector. She rarely sees her family, and, although most of them accept that she is too busy, her father Winfried (Peter Simonischek) wants a closer relationship with her. After a short visit to Bucharest and his apparent return home, he actually stays on and takes on the character of the eponymous Toni Erdmann, through which he inveigles his way into Ines’s life.
This is a difficult film to pin down. It seems to go nowhere and yet is entrancingly gripping. It is extremely long, at two and three-quarter hours, and yet leaves one wanting more. It has a strong storyline in Winfried’s ruse, and yet seems somewhat plotless. And although I left the cinema rather dissatisfied, this film has stayed with me. It, like Toni himself, has inveigle its way into my life.
Much of this work’s goodness comes from Ade’s screenplay. Dialogue is crisp, realistic and rich, with lightly sprinkled humour, switching seamlessly between German, English and Rumanian. Cinematography by Patrick Orth, although not panoramic, is rich in detail, particularly of modern-day Bucharest. One shot stands out: as Ines is leaning over the balcony of her uber-modern office, she looks down at a lane-way between two buildings, onto a vista of urban poverty. In fact, much of the film revolves around Rumania’s struggle for economic growth and development, and the issues that gives rise to. Again…a difficult film to pin down!
At its heart, this is film which gently unfolds over its nearly three hours, to pare away the layers, not just of the relationship between father and daughter, but of Ines’s life and of the coldness of capitalism at (literally) the coal-face.
This is brave film-making: complex, lengthy, containing confronting sex scenes and using three different languages, it could certainly not be called a crowd-pleaser. But for anyone who loves good film, and who is prepared to immerse themselves in something different, brilliant and unrepentantly flawed, then this a must-see.
Toni Erdmann opens 9 February 2017 at Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas.
Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
Twitter: @TraceyKorsten
Rating out of 10: 8
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