TIFF16 Film #1

Reason for Pick – Eli’s Hayes’ review out of Cannes

Toni Erdmann is a complex dance that paints the outline of the relationship between a lonely father and his career occupied daughter, who's living abroad.

I went in with the impression that this was going to be two hours and forty minutes of non-stop laughter. It isn’t. While there are frequent laugh-out-loud moments, and two scenes that sends the audience into fits, the remainder ranges from poignant to painful to awkward. Writer / Director Maren Ade isn’t afraid to linger on a shot, often cutting a few seconds after the natural beat, which gives a feeling of reality over scripted drama. She also isn’t afraid to use…

[8]

Well, Christian Petzold broke the ice, but it looks like Maren Ade's going to bring it home: the "Berlin School" has broken beyond the rarefied festival circuit to produce bona fide hits. What's particularly shocking about this turn of events is that, unlike other segments of the austere art-film universe, the Berlin School appears to have crossed over into the mainstream almost by accident. Apart from slightly more direct plotting, there's nothing about Petzold's Phoenix that made it inherently more accessible than his earlier films. And now, Ade gives us Toni Erdmann, a generational comedy that, at its core, is about the inappropriate character and unavoidable embarrassment that accompanies "humor" between the generations.

Ade has long been the stealth…

Winfried Conradi is a divorced music teacher, with a passion for bizarre pranks involving several fake personas. Following the death of his beloved dog, he decides to reconnect with his daughter, Ines, and spontaneously travels to meet her at her job in Bucharest, Romania. After waiting several hours for his daughter to appear, Winfried puts on sunglasses and fake teeth as a silly disguise of sorts and approaches her from the side while hiding behind a newspaper. Ines completely ignores her father, but meets with him briefly after work and invites him to a business reception. She remains cordial but distant as she's carried a great deal of frustration with her father's behavior. In the midst of her job requirements…

Toni Erdmann ist ein Familiendrama mit Komödie Aspekten. Er stammt von der deutschen Regisseurin und Drehbuchautorin Maren Ade, er wurde mit zahlreichen Nominierungen bedacht von denen er einige gewinnen konnte. Er beleuchtet das seltsame Familienverhältniss von Ines Conradi und Winfried Conradi, welcher sich im Laufe der Handlung den titelgebenden Alias Toni Erdmann gibt, um (mehr) am Leben seiner Tochter teilzunehmen. Die Story ist meiner Meinung nach sehr wirr erzählt, manchmal sehr komisch und nicht ganz nachvollziehbar. Bei den Darstellern bin ich mir unsicher ob ich sie klasse finde oder ob sie total schlecht sind, da aufgrund der wirren Handlung nicht hervorgeht ob das so sein soll, oder ob sie overacting betreiben, oder ob sie einfach schlecht schauspielern. Mit einer Laufzeit…