Toni Erdmann

Plot synopsis:
Winfried Conradi is a divorced music teacher, an old-age hippie of sorts, 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, who is pursuing a career in business consulting. Ines is currently posted in Bucharest, Romania, where she works on an outsourcing project in the oil industry. She is consumed by her work and seems to have little time for her family, least of all her father.
Winfried spontaneously travels to Bucharest and waits for Ines in the lobby of an office complex. After several hours, she finally appears, accompanied by several of her client's board members and on the way to a meeting. Winfried puts on sunglasses and fake teeth as a playful disguise, 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.
In the evening, Winfried accompanies Ines to the reception at the American Embassy, where they meet Henneberg, a German oil company CEO with whom Ines wishes to secure a consulting contract. Ines tries desperately to gain Henneberg's attention, but Henneberg seems more interested in her father. Winfried tells Henneberg that he has hired a replacement daughter because Ines is always busy. To Ines' surprise, Henneberg invites Winfried and Ines for drinks, along with his entourage. At the bar, Henneberg once again brushes aside Ines, and makes fun of Winfried.
After several days, Ines and Winfried are struggling to get along. Ines is consumed by work-related stress and oversleeps a planned rendezvous with clients, blaming her father for not waking her up. Winfried, feeling alienated and unwanted, leaves in a taxi for the airport. Ines continues with her work as normal, and several days later arranges to meet two female friends at a bar. While Ines and her friends are chatting, a man approaches and introduces himself as "Toni Erdmann". The man is clearly Winfried, disguised in a wig and with false teeth, but Ines does not let on. Ines' two friends politely engage "Erdmann" in conversation, and he explains that he is a life coach and consultant visiting Bucharest to attend the funeral of his friend's turtle.
Ines is increasingly frustrated and unfulfilled in her work and personal life, but continues to encounter "Erdmann" sporadically at parties or outside her office. At first Ines is angry with her father, and accuses him of trying to "ruin" her. However, as time goes on she comes to see the worth of her father's interventions in her life, and plays along with the "Erdmann" ruse. "Erdmann" accompanies her on a night out with her work friends, and eventually even comes to a business meeting with her. In turn, "Erdmann" takes Ines to a Romanian family's Easter party, where he forces her into a reluctant and comical, yet powerful, performance of Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All". After her performance, Ines promptly rushes off.
Back at her flat, Ines is preparing to host a business team-building brunch to celebrate her birthday. She struggles to zip up her tight dress, realizes her shoes don't match, and attempts to change clothes. The doorbell rings. Instead of redressing, or changing her outfit, she opens the door naked. Spontaneously, she decides to tell her guests that her birthday brunch is a "naked party". Each of them reacts differently, with some leaving in disgust while others self-consciously strip off. As the party becomes increasingly awkward, Winfried arrives dressed in a full-body Bulgarian kukeri costume. The costume frightens Ines' colleagues, but when Winfried leaves the party Ines follows him. Outside in a public park, father and daughter hug and share a moment of intimacy—despite Winfried's impractical and incongruous costume.
Months later, Ines returns to Germany for her grandmother's funeral. She explains that she has quit her job in Bucharest and will shortly begin a new job in Singapore with McKinsey & Company. After the funeral, Winfried and Ines play with some funny hats in the garden of her grandmother's house, and reflect on the nature of happiness.

Tags: absurd

Review:
I feel at a loss when it comes to the love for beloved Oscar nominated German dramedy Toni Erdmann.I've tried to understand why this excessive, criminally long and utterly weird (not funny) film, that at its core tells a rather generic and ordinary story of a father and his daughter has been so blatantly fawned over by many a top critic but I just can't see or understand why Maren Ade's tale has become the so-called classic it's been labelled with.Over 160 minutes of runtime we the audience get the "privilege" of following around the odd Winfried Conradi whose relationship with his business driven daughter Ines leads him to take up a persona of Toni Erdmann, a self-professed life coach that starts to follow Ines around to become a part of her working life.
It's a story with potential but told as dryly and blandly as Ade tells it, this ends up being a rare foreign film where you just can't wait to see a more tightly structured and funny Hollywood remake.There's nothing wrong with Peter Simonischek or Sandra Hüller's central performances as father and daughter duo Winfried and Ines and the two actors are both game to partake in some odd scenarios, from cupcake antics, odd birthday parties to awkward nights out with the girls, but Toni Erdmann has surely hoodwinked people into thinking strange and bizarre is in fact genius at work and while some who like their films cut from the bizarre corner of filmmaking will lap up Toni Erdmann's fondness for the odd, there will be other viewers such as me you don't buy into what Erdmann is selling us.It will be interesting to see how Hollywood tackles the stories untypical nature, but there's enough love flowing for the film around the place that acting legend Jack Nicholson has shunned his retirement plans to appear in the remake as the titular Erdmann while Girls superstar Lena Denham is attached to help work on the script, showcasing that Erdmann has its large portion of fans and few detractors.Final Say – Quite clearly Toni Erdmann wasn't for me and I understand that I will be one of only a few who didn't find this slow, charmless and cold experience that's trying to be an odd yet touching tale of a father and daughter, a sight for sore eyes.For those that get on board the journey of Winfried and his quest to reconnect to his daughter, Toni Erdman will be near 3 hours' worth of quality dramatics with laugh out loud oddness, for the other bewildered few, Toni Erdman is one of last year's most unduly praised experiences.1 cupcake out of 5.
It is not the usual light comedy since it touches very serious questions and the prevailing mood is unhappiness (it is however _very_ funny at times ;-)).That being said, this movie makes some very fine and subtle observations, presents them in a funny and entertaining form yet at the same time in a thought-provoking and philosophical way which will make you think about it for a long time.
I met "these" people over the last 25 years in Bucharest and in Germany.In this "new global world", the most of the time everybody is so deep into the details of "knowing how to be" because everybody is already like this, that if you take a step back and watch from a different angle you might wonder if anyone still remembers what it is to be a human.
As Ines facade cannot be broken, he starts disturbing her perfect world of rules and manners by becoming Toni Erdmann.The screenplay does not contain many big plot points but convinces the viewer by the development of its great characters and the intelligent and often embarrassing dialogues.
The dialogues with excellent acting are so trenchant that moments of great humor are coming up.Everybody of the business world looks strangely at Toni Erdmann when he appears but we start thinking about who is weird and crazy in reality.
I cannot say I got that.The story (which isn't really a story) roughly, is about a woman whose job is basically firing people off of other companies --- and her father who is bizarrely present and around her throughout most of the film , making awkward but somewhat distant jokes , supposedly to help her have a better life.Toni Erdmann is a bizarre film for sure.
Which is respectful, elegant and admirable in a way and that's a plus for Maren Ade.There are admirable things in Toni Erdmann , but for me there are also big flaws that reduced the overall viewing experience.The fatal flaw to name, is the starkness and the extreme cold atmosphere of this film and all its characters.
Good soundtrack , interesting and empathizing characters , a good atmosphere and locations , and of course a solid story that'll surround us and in the end win us with its charm so we'll want to re watch the film after it starts to rust in our memory.I don't want to watch Toni Erdmann again.
For the kind of praise it got , I expected better characters , better dialogues and in the whole a better picture.The direction in its practical sense of camera placement and movement was mediocre and so was the photography which was pretty basic so don't expect "good pictures".The admirable things about it, was the good acting, mostly by the father "Toni" but the daughter was modestly good as well in her role.
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Academy Awards, and supposedly the favourite to win the Oscar statuette although I fail to see what's so great about it, Toni Erdmann is a bland, overlong & tediously paced cinema that's amusing in bits n pieces but those moments are few n far in between.The story of Toni Erdmann follows an old-age hippie with a penchant for weird pranks who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter by paying her a surprise visit but only ends up messing her lifestyle.
The main focus is on the deteriorating relationship between a father & a daughter and an attempt by the former to bring a sense of joy back into the latter's life and much of it is finely illustrated.Still, the entire film feels empty from within.
Most of the pranks & lame attempts at humour fall flat, none of the characters exhibit a compelling arc, the plot becomes repetitive after a while, the dull pace at which its events unfold doesn't help either, there is no escalation whatsoever throughout its runtime, and although the performances are good, it fails to enrich the overall experience.Neither reverberating on emotional scale with its dramatic portions nor consistent when it comes to delivering the laughs with its elements of comedy, Toni Erdmann is an overly stretched & thinly sketched character study that limps aimlessly for 162 minutes before concluding on a banal note.
A character study of an eccentric father trying to re-connect with his very straight laced adult daughter doesn't sound like it would be nearly as unique as this wildly idiosyncratic film.
It would be too much to go into the overall plot of the movie (Toni Erdmann the character doesn't truly waltz on screen until about an hour in though we get a taste of him very, very early in the film).
A maturely crafted and emotionally thought-through psychological treatise on the enduring theme of child-parent relationships, "Toni Erdmann" tells about an obsessive jester (Peter Simonischek) desperately trying to reconnect with his estranged, dead-serious daughter (Sandra Hüller) who spends more time on the phone and business meetings than with friends or family.
This humor, relying on the superb performances of the two leading actors, is essentially supported by Ade's restraint style varying between such opposites as a tranquil continuity created by longer takes and more classical editing of shots with reverse shots, a hand-held camera as a realist denominator and a stripped soundscape as a stylized denominator where distant and quiet off-screen sounds are almost as conspicuous as a traditional music score is by its absence, spaces characterized by cold sterility (the daughter's apartment in Bucharest looks more like a hotel room than a home) opposed to blue-collar spaces with warmer light and color.
I really don't know why this film is so highly reviewed, it left me enraged.Granted, the actors, in particular Ingrid Bisu and Sandra Hüller performances were wonderful...but the story....Basically a typical baby boomer: monied enough to do as he pleases with a seemingly endlessly supply of time can't handle his daughter's work ethic so he sets out to ruin her life.
After the initial shock, Ines acquiesces to play along, introduces him to her friends and her decadent lifestyle, even brings him with her on a business sortie, conversely, through Toni, her icy shield would slowly break apart by humanly interactions, and the crux is an impromptu nude party where she finally sheds off all the hypocrisy and baggage life imposed on her and sees clearly for the first time who are real friends and who are just passing phonies, also a consummating hug to her father who is trapped in a giant mascot costume leavens both enthralling quirkiness and tear-eyed earnestness.
What TONI ERDMANN presses home is a rare bracing otherness and confidence totally unencumbered by the painful self-consciousness one cannot run away in our lives, then, Ms. Ade spikes it with organic humor to sustain its watchability and also with reflexive contemplation to hoist viewers to vicariously face the same quandary, Ines and Winfried's daughter-father relation crashingly reflects modern society's pandemic pathology: businesslike politeness, apathy, superficiality and emotional-clogging - which has undergone a judicious and unsentimental vivisection through the high-wire dexterity of Ade and her crew.
It might sound like banal themes, but they're explored in a heartwarming and funny way.My main objection with this movie is that I had a hard time understanding some of the characters at time, especially the daughter.
Toni's Weird Man. Seriously, WTF.The father's actions in this movie are totally unbelievable, making a mockery of the rest of the film, and turning the whole thing into an excruciating mess.Turned it off after 90 minutes..
He assumes an alter ego with a set of false teeth and a wig and pushes the limits for what lies he can get away with, but it's never in a mean-spirited way, and it's as if he's trying to stay relevant in a world that has passed his simple ways by.The movie gives us a pretty pessimistic view of finding a work/life balance in the two extremes it shows us; the father (Peter Simonischek) has little ambition and is a bit of an oaf, and the daughter (Sandra Hüller) works in the soul-numbing capacity of devising corporate strategies to outsource work overseas.
How disheartening is it to hear her reaction: "That's up to him; the more he fires, the fewer I have to fire." We contrast this with the kindness and dignity shown by these people, inviting him into their home when he needs to use the bathroom, and giving him a sack of apples.The film seems to be putting two things side by side - how the innocent moments of childhood slip away in one's life, and also, in a larger sense, how we've let something else slip away - our humanity.Unfortunately, it gives us a seriously disgusting sex scene in a hotel room involving petit fours that frankly I wish I could un-see.
There is an absurdity to it all, and maybe the father's advice "Don't lose humor" - don't take things too seriously - is the best coping strategy to life, which is too short and often depressing.Another beautiful scene in the film comes at the end, when the father explains how fleeting moments from her childhood float up into his mind, and how he wishes those moments could be held on to somehow - and yet, despite that realization, misses a moment in the present by going off to search for a camera in the attempt to capture it.
A film about a father struggling to connect with his daughter so he ends up infiltrating her business world with his alter-ego, Toni Erdmann.
After watching the film, I wonder why, precisely, it was nominated.The best thing in this movie is the acting, mostly carried out by Sandra Huller and Peter Simonischek, playing father and daughter.
"Toni Erdmann" is a father/daughter comedy-drama from Germany that critics are calling a masterpiece and the best film of the year when, in fact, it's just the kind of sentimental twaddle that Hollywood does somewhat more slickly and already we're told it's to be remade as a vehicle for Jack Nicholson in a role that could win him a fourth Oscar.It certainly isn't a bad movie but it's far from being a great one and at almost three hours is way too long.
This is the situation Maren Ade's Cannes Film Festival darling placing in her award winning film Toni Erdmann a film about a father-daughter relationship that's on the tip of the iceberg.You may think that is the most enjoyable thing, yet, there is a catch she's a workaholic and he's a practical joker who loves changing his persona by placing Jurgen Klopp-esque fake dentures and then putting on a shaggy wig, just to make his daughter laugh like she used to.
Toni Erdmann's set up sounds like a well-tooled Hollywood comedy: prankster father cheers up his workaholic daughter through wacky sometimes funny personas – here saccharine life lessons ensue throughout.
I confess my list would consist of Toni Erdmann and Deutschland '83 (well, it has funny bits, doesn't it?)And as you leave the film theatre 162 minutes after the opening of a spectacularly soundtrack-free Toni Erdmann you're left reflecting on the fact that it was funny, and when I say funny I mean screaming out loud as part of a cacophonous melee of film goers, but was it REALLY a comedy?You see, it's also deeply moving and actually the underlying sadness of the whole thing, the painful loneliness of the two extraordinary leads (both of whom should be Oscar nominated), makes your unrestrained laughter feel like a betrayal of their fragile mental health.Father and daughter, Winfreid (alias Toni Erdmann) and Ines, are a dysfunctional 69 year old and 40 something.He's a semi retired music teacher with a practical joker streak.
Toni Erdmann is the alter ego of Winfried Conradi, an aging father with a penchant for practical jokes who decides he doesn't like the direction his daughter's (Ines) joyless life has taken and tries to get her to loosen up and live a little.We don't learn much about the relationship that has led up to the series of events that comprise the film, but based on their awkwardness when together and the fact that Winfried is divorced from Ines's mother, we sense that there is resentment on the part of Ines, and that perhaps Winfried has not always been as present for his daughter as she would have liked.
This is followed quickly by one of its sweetest, as Ines thanks her father for reminding her that life is awfully long without a sense of humor.The final scene of the film is ambiguous, and it's been interesting to me to read different viewers' interpretations of it.
Life and the feelings of which it is composed are ambiguous and can mean many different things at the same time."Toni Erdmann" is on my list of the best movies I've seen this year.Grade: A+.
Similar in that sense to This is 40 in which it's long because as much as it is funny, some real emotional issues are happening in the film.You do not want to downplay the daddy daughter relationship happening in Toni Erdmann that is the center of the movie, but you do want people to laugh while relating.
And now, "Toni Erdmann", easily the best German film of the 2010s (so far).The story is deceptively simple: "Estranged father tries to reconnect with his adult daughter" As it is so often the case with great movies, what fascinates is less the story but the way it is told.
And it would have been advisable to end the movie with the pivotal scene the poster shows, which may very well be the most beautiful father-daughter reconciliation ever filmed..
A near-three hour German comedy that was always destined for some critical attention, given how unusual the setup and how good the performances.Sandra Huller, so good in her role as the business-like emotionally-detached daughter, anxiously reacting to the sudden unannounced appearance of her father into her life, following the death of his beloved dog at the start of the film, seeking to restore their bond gone adrift - both characters actually seem rather lonely in themselves.Simonischeck's father figure, and his alter-ego (the titular Toni) is quite the weapons-grade buffoon (thanks for that phrase, Empire), yet errs on the hilarious over irritating and never strays into the implausible.There are a couple of scenes so awkward it's hard to watch (one of those does end on an emotional punch at least), but in general the script balances itself well between awkwardness, laugh-out-loud funny and genuine sadness without being mawkish or folding into cliche.Definitely a slow burner, got to have some patience for the running time, and a bit of a mood piece but I found this surprisingly affecting and recalled several moments in the film days after seeing it.
This Oscar-nominated German comedy may have gained favour amongst others, but failed to leave me captivated through its' depiction of politics, pranks and dysfunctional families.The film views a snapshot of the life of Winfried Conradi - a music teacher and life-long prankster who, upon the death of his beloved canine companion, decides to visit his estranged daughter (Ines Conradi, played by Sandra Hüller) in Bucharest for her birthday..