Tulia (Julia Jentch) and Tobias (Felix Kramer) have a mostly uneventful marriage. They possess goods jobs, and they live a mostly functional life with their only daughter Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) inside a large and comfortable house. Their sex life too is remarkably conventional, one would hazard a guess. The biggest secret to their apparent happiness? The frugality of truth. Tobias never tells his wife that his colleagues dismiss him as an idiot. And she never tells him about the verbal sex with her sexy workmate, Max.
Tragically for them, Marielle is about to put an end to all of that. The quiet and shy teen develops telepathic powers after being slapped by a friend of her age. More specifically, she can see and hear everything her parents do, as if she was inside their bodies. There is no apparent explanation for her sudden supernatural abilities. Marielle isn’t particularly enthusiastic about her newfound skills: “I just do it, without even wanting it”, she confesses. Indeed it must be very unpleasant to watch her mother beg Max to lick her vagina and ejaculate in her mouth, or her father being humiliated by his boss.
Marielle forces her parents into sharing the most intimate details of their lives with each other, turning a quiet dinner routine into a hilarious confession routine. Julia has to reveal that she smokes, and that her relationship with Max may have crossed the flirtation line. Tobias embarrassingly describes a violent kerfuffle with his boss. The two adults end in a place they never wanted to be, desperately trying to convince themselves that honesty is a good thing after all. Julia uses the opportunity to question monogamy, and to come to terms with her extramarital inclinations. She fails miserably, to hilarious results.
What Marielle Knows is a cringe comedy. Family and social awkwardness prevails, with long moments of silence and abundant faces of hopelessness and perplexity. Jentsch delivers her lines with a touch of deadpan, while the young Geiseler inserts a certain coldness to the proceedings. She is a more pragmatic, Germanic version of Wednesday Addams, minus the black outfit. She confronts her parents with the inconvenient details of their lives with a dispassionate sense of detachment. She does occasionally break down and cry though, particularly after the realisation that her parents might be better off without her.
The biggest shortcoming of this German movie is Tobias’s subplot, at his workplace. These developments feel unfinished. And they are never as exciting as Julia’s salacious office affair.
Ostensibly made on a very low budget, What Marielle Knows features conventional camerawork (a familiar combination of medium shots, close-ups, and the occasional handheld), a very frugal music score, and virtually no special effects. This is a very austere movie that relies on one simple idea, an auspicious script and good performances in order to deliver genuinely funny moments, and a message of redemption. It’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
What Marielle Knows premiered in the Official Competition of the 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The UK premiere takes place at the 69th BFI London Film Festival.
