CHASING ‘LITTLE MOMENTS OF TRANSFORMING’
Five questions for the director of critics’ fave Toni Erdmann, now an Oscar nominee
Had it been up to critics attending the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Maren Ade’s offbeat comedy Toni Erdmann may well have won the Palme d’Or.
The film so charmed sourpuss scribes that they broke into applause in a scene when Sandra Huller’s besieged character Ines suddenly starts singing Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love Of All,” backed by her eccentric musician-father Winfried (Peter Simonischek).
The film was among the leading contender for the Palme, according to the straw polls of journalists attending Cannes. It won the FIPRESCI Prize handed out by international critics, who praised Toni Erdmann as “a film gorgeously crafted, made with a fresh and a sensitive approach, that captures the complex relationship between father and daughter and comments on the lunacy of today’s world.”
Yet when the jury for the Palme — Cannes’ top award — was distributing prizes at the end of the fest, Toni
Erdmann went home empty-handed. A lot of critics felt the film was robbed and so was German writer/ director Ade, but she’s more philosophical about the matter.
“You never know with juries,” Ade, who just turned 40, says in an interview during TIFF last September.
“I was a bit suspicious (of all the attention), because I was already happy. For me, it was really a big thing to be in the Palme competition. People had warned me that buyers would not even go to see it because it’s so long (nearly three hours). But they did, and there was the FIPRESCI Prize, so I was very happy.”
Since this interview, Ade has had more reason to smile. Toni Erdmann, now playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, was named as one of five nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the Feb. 26 Academy Awards.
There’s an old saying from Shakespeare: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” You must have had people telling you not to make a comedy running nearly three hours.
Yes, but when we actually saw the film, it was not possible to come to something like two hours. It would have been maybe possible to reduce it by 10 minutes, but I tried it out and it felt longer in a way because it lost something. And I thought, no, it’s long anyway, we will try it out.
It’s interesting that Ines is not a totally likeable character. We sympathize with the problems she’s having with her practical-joker father and with her sexist and patronizing co-workers. Yet Ines is a manager at a downsizing firm that orchestrates mass layoffs and she treats her female assistant badly.
Everybody dislikes her, which is how I wanted it. That’s the thing about female characters, or about characters in general. There’s always the question, “Yeah, but do we like the character?” And I always say, “Yeah, but do we have to?” It’s not interesting to always have characters that you like! Maybe you can identify more because you see people for who they really are.
Are there some autobiographical elements in the script? Have you found it difficult being a woman in an industry dominated by men?
Yes, but for me in Germany at film school, it was almost 50-50 men and women when I started, and a lot of producers are female producers. There are so many tough women in the film business but still not enough of them directing films — although for me, actually, it was good to be the only woman sometimes. I want more women to direct films, but still I never had problems with male colleagues.
Do you think that women make films that are different from ones made by men?
That’s a really complicated question to answer.
There are so many films that I like that men made, which are also about women. So I don’t have any problem with that. On the other hand, I have a (production) company, which is run by two women and one man, and we have a lot of projects by women. We don’t know why, we just picked them, but we always feel close to the story. Is it psychological or not?
Is your dad still alive? Was he at all an inspiration for Peter Simonischek’s Winnie in Toni Erdmann?
Yes, and he is a bit like the character. He has a good sense of humour and he likes to joke.
That thing with the fake teeth in the movie, my dad really did that for a while and they suited him very well! I found it interesting, these little moments of transforming.