This fascinating 2016 German tragicomedy starred Sandra Hüller and Peter Simonischek. Written and directed by Maren Ade, it explores the lives of a peculiar father-daughter relationship and the tensions the father’s eccentric behaviour create.
The film plays it straight, so viewers get a slice of realistic life all whilst surreal behaviour plays out. It’s packed full of surprising amounts of pathos, some funny moments, and all of it makes for a memorable cult classic.
Dadaism and Dignity in Toni Erdmann
It’s fair to say we’re big Sandra Hüller fans after seeing her in the unnerving Zone of Interest (2023). In the same year she was in Anatomy of a Fall, which is also considered one of the best films of the 2020s.
She’s currently in the biggest film of the moment (Project Hail Mary) with Ryan Gosling. But 10 years ago she starred in this unusual, avant-garde, Dadaistic (irrationality and ironic art) comedy-drama about an awkward father/daughter relationship.
Here she played the workaholic Ines Conradi whose life is interrupted by her eccentric father.
She works in Bucharest, Romania, for the oil industry. Her colleagues are alpha male ego dickheads, but she’s a determined career woman who’s austere and stressed out. Alongside work, she’s having a fling with one of the weird alpha male guys, but they’re poorly matched and there’s no way it’ll last.
Into this situation arrives Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek). He flies out from Germany to Romania to hang out with his daughter, feeling they don’t spend any time together.
His stay goes poorly and it appears he heads back home.
Ines gets on with her life. But in after-work events, she finds her father is still in Romania. He’s wearing a ridiculous wig, joke shop fake teeth, and introduces himself as Toni Erdmann. Over the days ahead, Erdmann randomly appears in her business circles. She confronts him.
Initially angry about her father’s behaviour, Ines soon starts to value the shakeup to her daily routine. In doing so, she gradually begins to drop her corporate veneer and release pent up emotions.
That manifests into a nervous breakdown. Her years working for sexist dickheads has stripped her of dignity, which culminates in an emotional karaoke scene (this goes from a bit awkward, to sad, and uplifting).
It’s classed is cringe comedy, we guess, along the lines of The Office. But we wouldn’t categories the whole film in that subgenre as there’s much more going on than just that. Anyway, behold Sandra Hüller giving it some welly!
Then, later the same day, an uncomfortable scene where Ines hosts a “Naked Team Building Party” at her flat. It occurs after Ines has her full breakdown—a dress is too tight, she gets stuck, and that’s the breaking point.
The result is she greets colleagues at her door naked. And they play along, rather than offer help. Not disrespecting the beautiful Sandra Hüller, but it’s an agonising painful and sad scene to watch. One that also shreds apart the farcical nature of corporate one-upmanship career ladder people play.
It’s the odd thing about Toni Erdmann. It’s officially classed as a comedy-drama, but the comedy elements are more dryly amusing and drenched in pathos (tragicomedy, then).
It’s not a laugh out loud film. We found it deeply poignant. An estranged father-daughter relationship, a woman with burnout, then the psychological collapse of the latter. The reason Toni Erdmann works so well is because it plays it straight as a drama. Had it been a slapstick comedy it would have been silly.
The story does end on a semi-uplifting note, with Ines having quit her stifling job. She plans to take on a challenging new venture in Singapore and, also, properly bonds with her father.
Yet it seems fleeting, with Ines’ steely gaze returning in the final shot.
As strange as the plot may sound, we found Toni Erdmann to be a very impressive film. It works so well thanks to the offset between Hüller’s bristling character and Simonischek’s bumbling, deadbeat nature.
There’s lots of clever writing from Maren Ade, too, with a savage indictment of professional stoicism and what it can do to a person. How seeming success masks major interpersonal problems and mental health battles.
It’s already considered a cult classic. 10 years after its release, we feel its time for wider appreciation.
The Production of Toni Erdmann
Sandra Hüller keeps a pretty low profile as an actor. She’s not on social media or anything, but the film she’s in right now with Ryan Gosling is the biggest one she’s been in. For more casual cinemagoers, they may not have a clue who she is.
She won a bunch of awards for her performance here, though, including Best Actress at the European Film Awards. Her co-start Peter Simonischek won Best Actor at the same event.
Sadly, he passed away a couple of years ago, having spent most of his career as a celebrated stage actor.
Director and writer Maren Ade won loads of awards for this, too, including Best Director and Screenwriter at the European Film Awards (Toni Erdmann dominated that event in December 2016). She had this to say back in 2017.
She directed the film in a documentary style, loosely basing Toni Erdmann on her father. The structure to the shoot was unusual, with a free-flowing style that amassed some 120 hours of footage with the actors.
That led to a 56 day shoot. From all that footage, Ade pieced together the best sections in the editing room and from that emerged this unique story. Editing took an entire year.
AND! Importantly, for us (as we don’t view the film as a comedy), Ade confirms she doesn’t think the film is a comedy. Both lead actors agreed, too, as there’s a great deal of sadness going on.
That does make us question some film critics, such as the Variety review calling the film “hilarious”. A journalist at the Los Angeles Times described it as “achingly funny”. We don’t know how they reached that conclusion, this is not Dumb and Dumber. We just can’t imagine people sitting in the cinema laughing themselves stupid, given most of the runtime is a serious drama.
What it does offers is some brilliant acting and a unique way of lampooning/satirising the nature of modern life. Plus, how a fake teeth and wig combo can bring you back from the brink.
