Toni Erdmann

Winifried (Peter Simonichek) is a divorced, semi-retired, teacher who, we quickly learn, loves to be the joker.  He's always turning himself into daft characters and trying to make people laugh, with mixed results.

Ines (Sandra Hüller) is his thirty something daughter, a successful careerist workaholic working for the oil industry in Bucharest.  When she returns home for a birthday celebration their brief period of contact shows up the gulf between father and daughter.  She thinks him embarrassing, he sees her as uptight and, of greater concern, fundamentally unhappy with her life.

Feeling even lonelier after his old dog dies, Winifried decides to bridge the gap and flies out to Bucharest for a surprise visit.  Unsurprisingly, it doesn't go well, she's too stressed to give him the time he wants, he's too off the wall to fit in to her world.  A lesser man would know when to quit, but instead he decides to return, this time, in a misguided attempt to embarrass her into acknowledging him, as his alter ego, the eponymous Toni E.  In wig and false teeth he insinuates himself into her life and that of her colleagues and friends.  What had, until that point, been a fairly conventional and mildly amusing parental relationship drama now becomes something more sinister, more toe-curling, and much, much funnier.

It's emotionally tough on both parties, but the events that follow do bring about some degree of closeness between the two, but it's bumpy ride to get there.  Her life might not be quite what it should be, but his intrusive daftness isn't always the answer.  And that results in some superb comedy scenes.  Including a cringingly brilliant rendition of a Whitney Houston song, the surprising impact of a Romanian Wookie, and a sexual encounter that will change your views on petits fours forever.

Both leads are excellent, with genuine pathos underlying the anger and clowning, as the emotional emptiness of both their lives is exposed.  It's a long film, verging on three hours, but never feels slow.  Instead the time gives the characters and relationships space to develop and evolve with the action, so that we have a strong feel for their history, and the real depth of the apparently tenuous bond between them.  There's a real feel for the awkwardness of the generation gap and how obsessive we can be as individuals.

Toni Erdmann works as both emotional drama and uproarious comedy.  For anyone still clinging to the ludicrous notion that Germans can't do comedy this is the movie to change your mind.