Toni Erdmann is a death clown, a life coach, and a Bulgarian monster. It's also a fabulous film.

Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. [Sony Pictures Classics]

TONI 
ERD-
MANN
(Maren 
Ade, Ger-
many, 
2016, 
162 
mins.)


Toni Erdmann, the character, is a death clown, a life coach, and a big, hairy Bulgarian monster. Toni Erdmann, the Oscar-nominated film from German filmmaker Maren Ade, is a farce, a tearjerker, and a bonkers take on globalization and its discontents.

It begins with a shaggy German music teacher, Winfried (Austrian theater veteran Peter Simonischek, simultaneously soulful and impish), who likes to play practical jokes that no one appreciates. His mother is an ungrateful grump, his ex-wife has moved on with her life, and his daughter, an oil industry consultant, is based in Romania. He's a lonely man with no one but his blind mutt, Willy, to keep him company.

When his daughter, Ines (the wondrous Sandra Hüller, who first caught my eye as a Belle de Jour-inspired sex surrogate in 2010's Brownian Move-
ment) drops by for a short visit, Winfried tries to connect with her, but she spends most of the time making work calls. Later, after a couple of per-
sonal setbacks, Winfried decides to visit Ines in Bucharest where his at-
tempts to make her laugh--involving a set of false teeth and a cheese grater--fall flat, so he pretends to leave only to re-emerge as Toni Erd-
mann, a goofy gent who pops up at the most inopportune times, like when Ines is with friends, coworkers, or the CEO she's desperate to impress.

At first, she plays along, but her discomfort grows as she starts to see her life through Toni's eyes: the casual sexism she tolerates on a daily basis, the snobbishness of her social set, and the real-world consequences of her boardroom decisions. Director Ade (Everyone Else) combines several films in one, and Toni Erdmann shouldn't work as well as it does, but it flows smoothly from comic set-pieces to humiliating encounters to Buñuel-like surrealism as a birthday party takes a turn for the transcendently strange. If the 162-minute film threatens to wear out its welcome, Ade brings everything home with a humanist's light, loving touch.


Cross-posted at The Stranger. Toni Erdmann opens Friday, February 
10, at SIFF Cinema Uptown (511 Queen Anne Avenue N).