There was German actress Sandra Hüller at the Oscars last weekend, looking sleek and pretty as she beamed for the cameras. But we also saw her on-screen in film clips: as an accused murderer cruelly deriding her late husband; as a Nazi wife purring gleefully as she tried on someone else’s fur coat and lipstick. So what are we to make of this woman, formerly unknown to most American audiences? Out of curiosity, I decided to watch the 2016 German film that first put Hüller on the world cinema map. Toni Erdmann, written and directed by Maren Ade, won awards all over Europe, and was an Oscar nominee for foreign language feature. I knew nothing about it, but sensed it was off-beat. An English-language poster full of review quotes contained language like this: “Wildly imaginative!” and “It’s absolutely nuts!”
It's also long (162 minutes), and for much of the early going I debated about switching off the video. The story begins with a white-haired German man, Winfried Conradi, opening the door to a delivery guy and implying that the package that’s arriving contains bomb-making materials. Winfried, who’s a divorced music teacher, likes to play bizarre practical jokes, sometimes donning a mop of a wig and a snaggly set of fake teeth to shock those around him. Hüller enters later as his grown daughter Ines, a successful businesswoman visiting from her high-power job in Bucharest, Romania. She’s in town to visit relatives, but can’t be torn away from her ever-present mobile phone.
The scene shifts to Bucharest, where we see more of Ines’ work life. Under constant stress from a need to please her bosses, she shoves herself daily into a business-like dark suit and very high heels, then coils her blonde hair into a tight French twist before setting out to make presentations to clients. She has a social life of sorts, but it’s always being interrupted by her strong sense of obligation to bosses who don’t always seem to have her best interests in mind. It’s only in a scene with her co-worker/lover—she’s uncharacteristically wearing a short, tight dress that doesn’t flatter—that we start to discover she’s incapable of truly feeling pleasure.
Into this tense atmosphere comes Winfried in his wig and fake teeth, introducing himself to Ines and her colleagues as an unlikely “life coach” named Toni Erdmann. The more that Ines tries to send him back to Germany, the more he pops up in her life, mingling with those in her circle and even claiming to be the German ambassador: they try to be polite but are clearly confused. It’s at this juncture that Ines seems to reach her breaking point. She’s been asked by the higher-ups to turn her birthday celebration into a team-building exercise via a party at her comfortable flat. She’s put out a spread of fancy foods and is struggling to pull herself into a colorful frock . . . but then something in her seems to give way. I won’t spoil all the surprises, but will merely say that after that wild and crazy sequence the audience starts looking at Ines in an entirely different way.
By the end, we’re back in Winfried’s German home town, for the staging of an elderly relative’s funeral. Once again father and daughter come together, for an interchange that’s surprisingly poignant. Both, I think, have changed—but Ines has clearly learned some key truths about herself, and we expect her future will be somehow much different from what has gone before. Brava to Sandra Hüller, who has shown us that she contains many possibilities.
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