HENRY JAMES ‘S DESCRIPTION of certain doorstop-sized nineteenth-century novels – the “large, loose, baggy monster” – applies pretty well to Maren Ade ‘s Toni Erdmann , a downbeat comic study of a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship that comes in a bit short of the three-hour mark, and which has as its keystone gag an actual large, loose, baggy monster. Ines is a thirtysomething German professional adrift in professional stasis despite her monomaniacal focus on climbing the corporate ladder at the backwater Romanian branch of a consultancy firm.

HENRY JAMES ‘S DESCRIPTION of certain doorstop-sized nineteenth-century novels – the “large, loose, baggy monster” – applies pretty well to Maren Ade ‘s Toni Erdmann , a downbeat comic study of a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship that comes in a bit short of the three-hour mark, and which has as its keystone gag an actual large, loose, baggy monster. Ines is a thirtysomething German professional adrift in professional stasis despite her monomaniacal focus on climbing the corporate ladder at the backwater Romanian branch of a consultancy firm.