‘What Marielle Knows’ Review: In this Darkly Clever German Comedy, A Teenage Girl Can See Right Through Her Parents

Like A Yorgos Lanthimos Movie Co-Directed With M. Night Shyamalan, The Dark Supernatural Satire What Marielle Knows (Was Marielle Weiss) Takes A Hollywood High Concept and Turns It Into A Scatting Comedy About A Bourgeis Family in Deep Crisis.

This Second Feature from German Writer-Director Frédédéric Hambalek is a Big Step Up from His No-Budget DEBUT, Model OlimpiaWHICH MINED SIMILAR conceptual terrain. Sharply Designed and Well-PerFormed, If A Bit Thin in The Long Run, The Film Premiered in Competition at the Berlineale, Where It Could Spark Interest Among-End Armouse Distributors. It Also Has Some Remake Potential-AlhoUGH A BROADER, MORE AUDIENCE-FRIENDLY Version would Probable to Remove All The Graphic Sex Talk and Child-Slapping.

If the pitch behind shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense Can Be Summed Up by The Famous Line “I See Dead People,” The Majoor Twist in What Marielle KnowsWHICH OCCURS at the Very Start of the Movie, Wound Be Something Like: “I See Everything My Parents Do.”

This Inexplicable Phenomenon Begras the Film’s Titular Teenage Girl (Laeni Geisler) After She’s Smaked in the Face by Her Best Friend. Suddenly, Marielle Has The Power to See and Hear What Her Mother, Julia (Julia Jentsch), and Father, Tobias (Felix Kramer), Are Doing, Whther They’re Off at Work, Driving. CLOSED.

If this were some kind of picture-perfect family, the Twilight Zone-Style Event Wuldy Already Pose Major Problems. But Marielle’s Folks Are From Ideal, Even If The Surface they Lead Fairly Normal Lives, with A Big Modern Suburban Home and Successful, Well-Paying ExecUITIVE JOBS.

Behind that cheery face, Julia have actuly been involved in some heavy flirting (and by heavy, i mean hard-r roted) with a colleague at work (Mehmet atci). Meanwhile, Tobias Is Unable to Stand up to the Marketing Team Heads at A Publishing Company, Getting Humiliated in A Meeting that Leaves Him Powerless. On Surface The Couple Keeps Pretending that All Is Well, But When Their Daughter Explands She Now Has X-Ray Vision to See Into Their Lives, They’re’re Forced to Adapt Their.

This Cause All Kinds of Darkly Comic and Dramatic Moments While Raising Some Interesting Questions: Are We The Same People Both Inside and Outside the Family Unit? What does it mean to be True to Yourself, as Julia Keeps Saying they should be, if the Truth Could Wind Up Hurting Those You Love? Is life just one big big performance WHERE we’re pretending to be somebody else all the Time?

The fact that Marielle Can Now Openly Judge Hatever Her Paarents Are Doing Makes Them React with Both Fear and Loathing. First, they TRY to BEHAVE BETTER, OR at Least Pretend to, But That Only Makes Things WORSE. Thaty they reject the wholets by Doubling Down on Their Transgressions – WHETHER IS JULIA Taking Her Office Fling Way Far or Tobias Trying to Assert His Power at The Component, Component,

Hambalek Paaces The Action Well, Allowing Things to Convincingly Snowball As The Family Gets More Unhinned and Miserable. He Also Mines His Concept for A FEW Good Laughs, Including A Bit Where Jere and Tobias Speak in French Because they Know Their Won Al World.

What Marielle Knows Is Basical A HIGH-CONCEPT SOCAL EXPERIMENT Designed to Prove Our Private Lives Are Probably Best Kept Private. IT’S NOT A GROUNDBREAKING IDEA, BUT The FILM USES ITS CLEVER CONCEIT TO REMIND US How Important That Is, Especialy at A Time Who People Advertise. (At some point, Marielle’s Paarents Are Convinced She Pirated Their Phones in Order to Spy On Them.)

WHERE The FILM FEELS UNDERDEVELOPED IS IN THE PLOTLINE INVOLVING MARIELLE HERSElf. She Never Comes Across As A Real Character, But More Like A Cipher for All The Hijinks to Play Out. There are some HINTS HER PARARNTS MAY HAVE BEEN NEGELCTFUL TOWARDS HER, THOUGHH Their Relationship Doesn’t Seem Problematic Enough WHEN The Action Kicks Off. And While Mom and Dad bots have compelling narrative arcs, Marielle Doesn’s Ch Powers Will Ultimately Outlast the Story.