"Where is it written in our DNA that parents are embarrassing?" muses Maren Ade. We are discussing her film Toni Erdmann, the break-out critical hit of Cannes Film festival. The feature centres on the fractured relationship between executive-suited Ines – ambitious, repressed, humourless, ruthless and brilliantly portrayed by German actor Sandra Huller – and the shaggy, lonely father who wants her to unbend and be the playmate she was as a child.
Winfried (Austrian stage actor Peter Simonischek: also excellent) is an embarrassing parent by any measure, but he excels himself in Bucharest. Ines is in Romania to pursue a contract on behalf of the management consultancy where she works when her father arrives with his overnight bag, a wig and some fake teeth. These are the makings of his alter ego, Toni Erdmann, who will pay a surprise visit to her office. Ines is a bit insufferable, but you feel your toes curl in sympathy with her discomfort. "This film is my future, maybe," says Ade. "I have some of these tendencies already – even at four, my son thinks I am embarrassing."
Of course, this isn't Hollywood: there are too many little pulls of resentment as well as affection in this relationship for everything to be solved with a hug. Winfried's naughtiness is appealing, but is he really just a loveable old hippy? Or a selfish bully? "There are different types of humour," says Ade. "Sometimes you show something about yourself joking and sometimes you hide behind a joke. Toni is also a very aggressive father. It's funny to watch, but imagine being her. That your own father would do these things; you sit and wonder what does he want from me? Is he a friend or your enemy?"
And what of Ines? The management consultant, who arrives at the workplace charged with looking for people to sack, is the modern version of a pantomime villain: we know we're not supposed to like her. Ade says she was intrigued by people around the same age as her – mid-30s – who made a life out of going into companies looking for people to sack. "Ines is something completely different for me: the enemy. But like any enemy, when you get closer and get interested, it's like the thing dissolves.
"Most of them are very clever persons, they do their job out of interest, they travel a lot and you have to be very open to go into a company and get to know a new project, three months here, six months there. And there are things I can identify with. Film-making is also something you have to put very high, sometimes over the individual, if you are going to get a movie made. And if you have been on a film set, there is a very strong hierarchy. It has a capitalistic form and that is a conflict.",
Ade grew up in the German provincial city of Karlsruhe, the daughter of two teachers. Her first feature The Forest for the Trees (2003), which was her graduation project from film school, was a piercing study of a socially awkward, incompetent teacher who battles isolation in the staff room of her first posting. Her second film, Everyone Else (2009), focused on a new couple who, despite all the enthusiastic courting sex, show myriad tiny signs of splitting soon. Both were critically admired on the festival circuit and Everyone Else had a small US release, but Toni Erdmann is in another league. Apart from anything else, it's very funny.
She did set out to write a comedy, says Ade. "But I am really surprised to keep reading about the comedy by Maren Ade because by the time I finished it, I had seen it about 20 times doing the sound mix and I had the feeling I was bringing a very melancholic film to Cannes. A full cinema is something so different! But it's a heavy topic too. When you see a couple relationship in a film, there is the possibility of thinking 'OK, you can solve your problem by splitting up'. But with a parent, it's lifelong. You can't get rid of them."
Toni Erdmann screens at Melbourne International FIlm Festival on July 30 and August 3. The Age is a festival partner.
