FYC: Best Original Screenplay, Toni Erdmann

by Daniel Crooke

While you will find ancient cities, hairy beasts, and moments of jaw-dropping audacity steering the rudder of its staggering runtime, you won’t hear a film score in Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann – an epic of the heart and soul that depends on its screenplay to direct emotional payoffs the way many films depend on their orchestra. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly globalizing yet regionally fractured Europe, the central couple in Toni Erdmann is not a pair of battle-scarred lovers or unlikely allies in combat but an estranged father and daughter, torn apart by generational attitudes in the culture war.

This central reconciliation resonates thematically now more than ever, at a time when capitalist societies across the Western world forgo compassion and human consequence in pursuit of a more profitable bottom line. In her hysterical, observant comedy, Ade crafts a squirrely, screwy rebuke to anesthetized corporate cold-heartedness but – more importantly – champions a disappearing social fabric by weaving together the frayed ends of a family unit...

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Toronto Critics Prizes

Toronto Film Critics Association, our friends to the North established back in 1997, stuck with their Southern neighbors in embracing Moonlight and Manchester (2 prizes each) and the folks cross the ocean in loving all over Toni Erdmann (3 prizes). Their full list is after the jump and we're so glad The VVitch was finally honored. It took the home team (O Canada!) to finally get that done...

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EFA ♥︎s Toni Erdmann

The 29th European Film Awards were held in Wroclaw Poland today and they went all in for the very popular German father/daughter comedy Toni Erdmann with five major prizes. It was also a huge night for women with wins in Direction, Screenplay, Cinematography, Costume Design and more! Super high profile titles like Isabelle Huppert & Paul Verhoeven's Elle and Pedro Almodóvar's Julieta went home empty handed, though.

Maren Ade was the belle of the EFA ball

The winners are after the jump...

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Sight & Sound's Top 20

So many lists and awards announcements this week you'd think it was... oh, yes, it is December. Sight and Sound enter the fray now with their top 20 which is a mix of expected auteur worship titles, festival films that may or may not ever actually open. It's also very now. The oldest title here is the great German continuous shot film Victoria (which premiered at festivals last year -- we nominated it for cinematography in 2015) but almost everything else just opened or hasn't opened yet! It's to be expected but also deeply frustrating that distributors never really catch up to film buzz...

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The Top Tens Begin... Neon Demon?

Everyone will have to have their say about which films are the "best" of the year and that starts, bizarrely, right now even though it's still November. First up is the famed Cahiers du Cinema, which is the oldest film publication still running stretching back to the early 1950s. 

Since they're in France, they have a different timetable on releases so TFE's primary 2015 obsession factors in -- Why Carol, it's so good to see you again! But because they are Cahiers du Cinema and generally choose at least one polarizing but largely hated picture, Neon Demon is up near the top. 

Their Top Ten List
1 Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
2 Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
3 The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn)
4 Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
5 Slack Bay (Bruno Dumont)
6 Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar)
7 Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)
8 La Loi de la jungle (Antonin Peretjatko)
9 Carol (Todd Haynes)
10 Le bois dont les rêves sont faits (Claire Simon)

What do you make of the list? The two I wasn't familiar with are both French and haven't played much elsewhere. Les bois... is a 2 hour plus documentary about people in the woods, cruising for sex, living there if homeless people, etcetera. Jungle is a comedy set in French Guiana which is in South America.