Opening with an inspired plot twist, then milking it for maximum tragicomic mileage, What Marielle Knows is a perky satirical gem from German writer-director Frédéric Hambalek. Born from a casual role-reversal thought experiment about children suddenly developing the power to monitor adult behaviour as closely as modern tech-savvy parents spy on their offspring, Hambalek’s second feature makes its world premiere this week in the Berlinale’s main competition section. Sharp-witted and crisply packaged, this dark fairy tale is that rarely sighted beast: a German comedy with strong crossover potential for wider international audiences.
What Marielle Knows begins with an attention-grabbing slow-motion close-up of a pre-teen schoolgirl being slapped in the face. This is Marielle (Laeni Geiseler), and the blow soon proves to have far-reaching consequences. Later that same day, we witness Marielle’s mother Julia (Julia Jentsch) spicing up her dull office routine with some heavy flirtation, sharing an illicit cigarette and graphic fantasy sex talk with her married co-worker Max (Mehmet Atesçi), apparently a regular workplace perk for both of them. Meanwhile, Julia’s publisher husband Tobias (Felix Kramer) is battling quarrelsome team members who question his pretentious cover design ideas, a mutiny led by his younger rival Sören (Moritz Treuenfels), their mutual loathing thinly veiled behind glib professional jargon about positive feedback.
That evening, with the family reunited at home, Marielle shares some bombshell news. The slap from her classmate, triggered by a petty name-calling spat, appears to have awakened bizarre telepathic powers in her brain. She can now remotely hear and see everything her parents are doing, in real time, including their flirty transgression and humiliating workplace battles. As a sulky, pitiless, judgmental pre-teen, she is also appalled by their imperfect behaviour, angrily calling out their self-flattering lies and dissembling half-truths.
Julia and Tobias initially react with denial and disbelief, convinced Marielle must be pulling some smart technological trick. But when the true chilling horror sinks in, that their daughter really is monitoring every word and deed, they become acutely self-conscious and begin to stage-manage their lives with her surveillance in mind. In one gloriously funny sequence, the pair switch to speaking French to block Marielle from following their conversation.
Hambalek treats his magical-realist premise with a light touch, recognising its function as a useful plot device rather than a quasi-scientific phenomenon that requires a contrived stab at logical explanation. The default tone here is gleefully dark satire, but with a creeping undertow of paranoid anxiety. Inevitably, pretending to be perfect parents has a destabilising effect on Julia and Tobias, who swing between strained role-playing, guilty confessionals, anguished soul-searching, and surrendering to their repressed inner urges. Sex and violence soon come crashing through their outer veneer of middle-class respectability.
What Marielle Knows satirises some familiar targets: the routine hypocrisy of western bourgeois life, the frosty ambivalence some parents privately feel towards their children, the secrets and lies that keep marriages together. But Hambalek avoids taking the easy path of sneering mockery, instead inviting empathy for these flawed but forgivable adults and (especially) their traumatised daughter, whose sudden psychic gift is more burden than blessing. “I should just die,” she tells her parents tearfully, “then you can do what you want again.”
Crisp, concise and contained, What Marielle Knows barely strikes a wrong note in its slender runtime. That said, more exploration of Marielle’s own emotional hinterland would have been welcome, particularly during the second act, when she virtually vanishes off-screen. Some speculation on the wider socio-political impact of children developing telepathic powers might also have been fun, though that would arguably be a very different film.
Formally, What Marielle Knows is a modestly scaled chamber drama at heart, mostly shot in a handful of real interior locations using a fairly standard hand-held aesthetic. Recurring, dreamlike, heavily tinted slow-motion close-ups of Marielle add a welcome hint of mind-bending supernatural weirdness, while sporadic flurries of vibrant orchestral music sit well with the film’s brisk, witty, coolly acerbic tone.
Director, screenwriter: Frédéric Hambalek
Cast: Julia Jentsch, Felix Kramer, Laeni Geiseler, Mehmet Ate?çi, Moritz Treuenfels
Cinematography: Alexander Griesser
Editing: Anne Fabini
Production design: Bartholomäus Martin Kleppek
Producers: Philipp Worm, Tobias Walker
Production company: Walker & Worm (Germany)
World sales: Lucky Number
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In German
86 minutes
