What we rarely consider is the equal number of imperfect facets. A writer as skilled and attentive to loaded details as Ade could likely have told a touching, redemptive tale of a harried businesswoman and her befuddled dad resolving their differences and finding common ground in half the running time, but “Toni Erdmann” . Though she has kept herself busy producing for Miguel Gomes, among others, in the interim, one hopes a deserved Cannes competition berth earns her latest (a complicated commercial play, it must be admitted) enough international exposure to hasten further projects of her own. In case you’re wondering, “Toni Erdmann” is the name of neither protagonist in the film . A deliberate, gradually farcical opening scene introduces Winfried Conradi (Simonischek), a divorced piano teacher aimlessly whiling away his semi- retirement in suburban Germany, as a habitual master of prankish disguise, practising multiple personae on a bewildered postman. When his beloved, elderly mutt finally gives up the ghost, Winfried has even less to build his life around than usual; reconnecting with his only child Ines (H. To synopsize events much further would be to impede viewers’ enjoyment of Ade’s consistently unpredictable relationship anatomy, as well as the ever- more- precarious trapeze walk of its heightening comic tone . Father and daughter are far from done, too, as he keeps resurfacing in alternative guises: Most aggravatingly to the fearsomely capable Ines, she finds that she’s taken more seriously in business with a man at her side, even one as sloppily uninformed as her father. Toni Erdmann TrailerIn a glorious, risk- it- all final hour, Ade and her actors attain a cleansing yet conflicted sense of emotional release through a series of wild, nervily sustained comedic set pieces that lay the characters bare in more ways than one. At one point, focus is fleetingly pulled from Ines’s inner turmoil as she glances down from the lofty heights of her company tower to a swirl of destitute human activity in a crumbling Bucharest shanty so many floors below. Not a word is said about it, but like all great humanist filmmaking, “Toni Erdmann” keeps an eye out for life at the edges, even when the lives in focus consume a whole lot of energy. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 1. Executive producer, Ben von Dobeneck. Co- producers, Bruno Wagner, Antonin Svoboda. Crew. Directed, written by Maren Ade. Camera (color, widescreen), Patrick Orth; editor, Heike Parplies; music, Patrick Veigel; production designer, Silke Fischer; art director, Malina Ionescu; set decorator, Katja Schl. There are sides of ourselves — reckless ones, ruthless ones, occasionally hopeless ones — that we never want our parents to see, even, or perhaps especially, in. Maren Ades 'Toni Erdmann' war der erste deutsche Film nach acht Jahren, der im Wettbewerb von Cannes lief. Das Publikum lachte Tr
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