52 Films Directed By Women Vol 1: 57. TONI ERDMANN (Director: Maren Ade)
There are those who believe that the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival should have been given to Toni Erdmann , a two-hour-and-forty-two-minute German comedy about an unusual father-daughter relationship. As many critics will tell you, comedies don’t win major prizes as they are assumed to be frivolous – not art. There are two recent exceptions. La Vita È Bella (Life is Beautiful) (1997) winner of the 1998 Best Picture Oscar featured a father (Roberto Benigni) fighting to convince his young son (Gioergio Canterini) that they are not in a concentration camp and that the adults around them are playing an elaborate game. Michel Hazanvicius’ The Artist (2011) winner of the 2012 Best Picture Oscar was also a comedy about an over-confident silent movie star (Jean Dujardin) lost in the sound era. Let’s not also forget that Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. won the Palme D’Or equivalent at Cannes in 1970. As these films prove, a comedy can say as much as a serious film. This is c...