Winfried Conradi, the man at the center of Maren Ade's film Toni Erdmann, is a bearish, nearly retired music teacher, an aging baby boomer whose response to the mundane and unimaginative world around him is to slip in a set of grotesquely formed false teeth and take on new personae, to the bewilderment of his neighbors and the occasional unwary delivery man. He's a gentle anarchist, waging mild protests against the world solely for his own amusement. Winfried's daughter Ines has fallen far from the familial tree: She's a no-nonsense careerist in the international business world, with a personal assistant at arm's reach and cell phone fixed in her sight line.…
Winfried Conradi, the man at the center of Maren Ade's film Toni Erdmann, is a bearish, nearly retired music teacher, an aging baby boomer whose response to the mundane and unimaginative world around him is to slip in a set of grotesquely formed false teeth and take on new personae, to the bewilderment of his neighbors and the occasional unwary delivery man. He's a gentle anarchist, waging mild protests against the world solely for his own amusement. Winfried's daughter Ines has fallen far from the familial tree: She's a no-nonsense careerist in the international business world, with a personal assistant at arm's reach and cell phone fixed in her sight line.…