Convinced that his daughter has forgotten how to laugh, a father shows up unannounced while she's living abroad and bombards her with outrageous jokes.
Sandra Hüller, Peter Simonischek, Michael Wittenborn, Thomas Loibl, Trystan Pütter, Ingrid Bisu, Hadewych Minis, Lucy Russell, Victoria Cociaș, Alexandru Papadopol, Victoria Malektorovych, Ingrid Burkhard, Jürg Löw, Ruth Reinecke, Nicolas Wackerbarth, Mihai Manolache, Radu Bânzaru, Niels Bormann, Radu Dumitrache, Klara Höfels
Where to watch
Hulu
Curator Review
Verdict
A long, shaggy, deeply humane comedy-drama that turns a father-daughter reunion into one of the great modern films about work, identity, and emotional distance. It’s funny in a way that keeps curdling into ache, and its length feels earned by the accumulation of awkwardness, tenderness, and release.
Best for
Viewers who like awkward, character-driven comedy with real emotional stakes
Fans of long-form European dramas that mix satire and pathos
People interested in family stories about adult children and aging parents
Audiences who enjoy cringe comedy that gradually becomes moving
Skip if
You want a fast, tightly plotted comedy
You dislike extended awkwardness, nudity, or performance-art style humor
You prefer broadly likable characters and clean emotional payoffs
You’re not in the mood for a 160-minute film that lingers in discomfort
Overview
Maren Ade makes a comedy of embarrassment that never feels cheap. The jokes are outrageous, but they’re built on something sturdier: a father trying to reach a daughter who has learned to survive by becoming professionally untouchable. That tension gives the film its strange, accumulating power.
Worth noting
What starts as a prank-heavy reunion becomes a piercing portrait of modern work culture, loneliness, and the cost of self-protection. The film is patient, observant, and often very funny, but it’s also quietly devastating about how hard it is for adults to be known by the people who love them.
Bottom line
Its reputation for length is deserved, but the movie uses time as part of the joke and part of the wound. By the end, the absurdity has become a form of intimacy, and the emotional payoff lands because the film has earned every awkward step toward it.
Top Letterboxd reviews
matt lynch (4★) · 817 likes
So when's the shitty Paul Feig remake with like Pacino and Rose Byrne?
[puts in goofy dentures]
Don't you dare steal my idea.
davidehrlich (4.5★) · 719 likes
it's true.
all of it.
(i have some major misgivings about the last 15 minutes, which feel — at least on first viewing — that they blunt out what could have been one of the great movie endings in recent memory, but everything you heard from Cannes about Maren Ade's shaggy epic is right on the money. the shortest 160 minutes you'll spend at the movies this year).
Eli Hayes (4.5★) · 477 likes
Almost everyone in my theater was laughing for about three hours straight. I think that speaks for itself; I've never quite had a movie-going experience like seeing this film with an audience.
Filipe Furtado (4.5★) · 413 likes
“He was on old dog”.
That the humanist ideal of reconstruction Europe and the current European community can’t be reconciled is old news, but it takes an Andy Kaufmanesque prankster in a very old fashioned sentimental mission to, if not exactly exhume the corpse at least bring it into sharp relief. You'll laugh, you'll cry and things will just pass away. And it is really very very funny. Experimental human behavior played with broad Cassavetian exuberance at its best. Also, in the age of bloated festival film, it is always joy to get a 160 minutes one that needs every second of it to count.
Marcy Webb (3.5★) · 404 likes
I never want to see a man wanking over a cake ever again