Toni Erdmann (15)

TONI Erdmann is about one of the most familiar stories in the world: a parent struggling to stay relevant in their child’s life. But how German writer/director Maren Ade addresses her theme is entirely from left-field, a bizarre comedy of embarrassment that makes David Brent’s antics in The Office seem positively normal.

The result is one of the most idiosyncratic films for years, which requires a certain suspension of disbelief but rewards in spades. The highlights are some brilliant and memorable laugh-out-loud moments. But there’s real depth to the comedy, as this weirdly wise account of the lengths that a father will go to reconnect with his daughter – and to save her from herself – doubles as a caustic critique of the business world.

It’s evident from the outset that ageing music teacher Winfried (Peter Simonischek) is a rum fellow. Divorced, living alone with his dog and fond of practical jokes, Winfried keeps a pair of over-sized fake teeth in his shirt pocket for whenever he wants to tease someone, or simply comfort himself in nervous situations.

In contrast, his thirty-something daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller) is a humourless careerist, making her way up the carnivorous food chain of the corporate world as a jet-setting consultant to an oil company. On a visit home to Germany she’s not interested in either of her parents, and Winfried in particular struggles with her indifference.

That’s why Dad decides to pay his daughter a surprise visit in Bucharest, where she’s brokering a dodgy deal. Ines reluctantly hosts him in her apartment, but her attempts to combine work with family are disastrous, especially when he inadvertently adds fuel to her humiliation at the hands of her vile male clients.

And so Winfried is soon packing his bags and heading for the airport. But he doesn’t exactly leave. Before Ines has done moaning about her dad to her girlfriends, Toni Erdmann arrives to make her life even more complicated.

It’s a necessary spoiler to say that Erdmann is Winfried, complete with appalling wig and the aforementioned fake teeth, the teacher posing as a “life coach” to the business world. This is not a cunning Mission Impossible-style disguise, but a brazenly hapless one, which his daughter is meant to see through immediately – but be hopeless to do anything about.

As the grotesque Erdmann inveigles himself into his daughter’s office environment and gate-crashes her business parties, his teeth framing a permanent smirk, his very presence is a riposte to Ines’s treatment of him and to the ghastliness of the world in which she’s chosen to exist.

And boy does she need him. “I’m not a feminist, or I wouldn’t tolerate guys like you,” Ines tell her boss. But in seeking acceptance in this male-dominated world she is losing sight of herself.

Looking like a Muppet or a pantomime villain, Toni isn’t at all believable as a human being, and this is my one issue with the film: ordinarily, anyone coming across him would call for security. That said, no doubt both Winfried and Maren Ade’s point is that everyone in this world is pretty hideous – sexist, shallow, corrupt – and that’s why they don’t.

And once we accept the lack of sense, it’s easy to succumb to Winfried’s unusual rescue of his daughter, by teaching her a little humanity and perspective, and to reintroduce her to a sense of fun.

A lot depends on the performances, and both leads are exceptional, never letting us forget the pathos that underpins the increasingly outrageous situations, as the chunky running time flies towards a party that will redefine the idea of team bonding.

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