‘Toni Erdmann’ mixes big laughs with real, complex family drama

Based on its premise, Toni Erdmann (2016) sounds like a typical Hollywood comedy-drama: an oddball father attempts to reconnect with his uptight daughter. Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) is a retired music teacher who loves pulling pranks involving costumes, props, and even the timeless whoopie cushion. His daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller) is distant, now living in Romania and working tirelessly as a business consultant.

However, the German Academy Award Nominee subverts the familiarities of the genre and quickly sinks into the character’s internal angst. Erdmann masterfully balances a complex tone that quickly shifts between genuinely laugh-out-loud hilarious and painfully sad as its two leads struggle to find real happiness in life. With a nearly three-hour runtime, which unfortunately may scare off some audiences, Erdmann is able to intimately and realistically detail a lushly complicated father-daughter relationship.

After seeing Ines neglect the people around her as she constantly talks business on the phone, her father Winfried begins to fear for his daughter’s happiness, just as he comes to terms with his own unhappiness and loneliness. After the death of his only companion, his dog, Winfried decides to go to Romania to surprise Ines. However, Ines rejects and alienates him after he appears at a business meeting, seeing him as an embarrassment and a distraction.

Winfried appears to leave Romania, but Ines sees him the next day, now wearing a black wig, a pair of fake teeth, and going by the name “Toni Erdmann.” Instead of rejecting him for the second time, Ines goes along with her father’s disguise, and starts to allow him to have an effect on her life, such as allowing her to party with her friends at a bar or taking her somewhere new.

Erdmann soars as Ines and Winfried clash; their two opposed philosophies constantly at odds with one another. Ines is order, while Winfried is chaos, the classic comedic pairing. However, in writer-director Maren Ade’s hands, the pairing becomes unique, as the audience observes the polar opposite father and daughter’s similarities, and how they need one another in their lives.

Toni Erdmann has the hallmarks of a classic comedy-drama, including several big comedic set-pieces throughout the film that are genuinely hilarious. Even though foreign language comedy is often lost in translation, there are many big laughs throughout Ade’s film. The drama, however, is much more subtle and nuanced. Winfried and Ines are not simply an “arguing parent and child” who can’t stay in the same room without screaming with one another. The problem is much more realistic, and sadly more serious: neither really seems to understand the other in the slightest.

Ade is able to balance the complicated tone in Toni Erdmann by resisting big fights, and instead focusing on the little moments. For example, there are no flashbacks or any “big talks” about the complicated history between Winfried and Ines until a singular climatic confrontation. In Erdmann, the characters, especially Ines, are content to hide their problems and hope they can keep their head down and not have to confront them. Throughout the entire film, from its depictions of angst and familial conflict, to its ending revelation in the park, Ade exercises dramatic restraint to keep Erdmann’s tone grounded and keep it from exploring cheap melodrama.

Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller, both relative unknowns, at least internationally before starring in Erdmann, are both astounding as the leading father and daughter. Simonischek often steals the scene with his portrayal of the outrageous but always somehow well-meaning Winfried. Hüller convincingly portrays Ines as she slowly breaks out of her shell, leading to two extremely memorable scenes at the end of the film where Ines truly pursues happiness for herself.

Although Toni Erdmann is a truly funny film, what makes it special is how it handles the sadness that runs through its characters. The film restrains itself in order to create extremely subtle, genuine moments between a father and daughter through its subversion of a familiar cinematic formula.