What Marielle Knows Review: The economy of truth
Plus, a short called Baby Tooth.
WHAT MARIELLE KNOWS
There's something perversely karmic about slapping someone for spitting out an ugly truth (as they see it), only to knock something loose in their wiring that forces them to confront a few ugly truths of their own. That's precisely what happens to young Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) in Frédéric Hambalek's What Marielle Knows, an acidic melodrama where honesty is less a virtue than a bludgeon. After this abrupt shift in perception (strikingly captured in slow motion), Marielle begins reporting her parents' private behavior back to them, each startling (and accurate) revelation leaving marks that her family's polite façade won't conceal for long. What follows is a darkly comic unraveling of familial order in which this poor girl consistently traps her uptight folks, Julia (Julia Jentsch) and Tobias (Felix Kramer), in a web of lies by simply telling the truth.
People like to say it will set you free, but here, truth just immerses Marielle in grown-up horseshit. She's been psychologically rocked by this bizarre change, but all Julia and Tobias can think about is how her cataloging of their sins disturbs the dinner conversation. So, initially, they obfuscate: Tobias's lies are petty enough that he feels justified in prolonging them; Julia's are more embarrassing and perilous. Both misjudge how Marielle's perception of them as her parents is changing in real time. Plus, with her only daughter spilling tea all over the place, That One Big Secret (which Tobias must not know) makes Julia's role as mother and wife buckle under the weight of omission.
It's mesmerizing to observe the ripple effects Marielle leaves in her wake. Take Tobias: his braggy yarn about dressing down a colleague is, of course, fiction, spun to feel some much-needed validation from his family. When Marielle calls him out with tears streaming down her cheeks, it sends him into a tailspin of reflection; naturally, his next work meeting becomes a reckoning. Meanwhile, Julia, astonished by Marielle's painfully exact recounting of private events, embraces her selfishness, having her cake and leaving Tobias with pathetic morsels to nibble on. From here, a more insidious form of deceit takes shape, and self-delusion spreads like a toxic rot.
Hambalek, with cinematographer Alexander Griesser, frames this once-tranquil home with an eye for tidiness and order, insinuating the desolation to come should Marielle's strange epiphany reveal more about her family than they are prepared to spin. He juxtaposes this glacial order with the messy emotions of his performers: Jentsch and Kramer maintain stoic fronts for their characters but allow doubt and shame to seep beneath furtive glances, while Geiseler is a wonder; her gaze conveys much even as she says so little. Hambalek presents her with an enigmatic and crimson glare that reflects the film's pervasive theme of guilt. Under this omnipresent gaze, they collectively inhabit a diorama that reveals all the things that most people keep hidden to preserve a tenuous status quo.
But that's why adults lie, isn't it? To keep the peace, protect feelings, and release pressure without asking permission? To ignore the distance that routine puts between us and the ones we love? What happens when we finally tell those closest to us what we're really feeling, what's absent in our lives, what wants aren't being met? The righteous will say "the truth." Hambalek doesn't moralize as harshly. "Isn't it nice that we can talk openly?" Julia asks at dinner, her voice brittle, as Marielle and Tobias share hollowed-out blinks. It's the film's gnarliest twist of the knife, a moment where the ugly truth becomes a lie. What Marielle Knows begins bluntly and ends ambiguously, engaging us with what comes after all the delusions that prop up a life are torched, where the smoldering silence of a family that finally sees itself for what it is can sift through the remains and, perhaps, build again.
8 / 10
What Marielle Knows premiered at the Village East at Angelika on Tuesday, June 10. For more info, click this.
Written and directed by Frédéric Hambalek.
Starring Julia Jentsch, Felix Kramer, Laeni Geiseler, Mehmet Ateşçi, Sissy Höfferer, and Moritz Treuenfels.
86 mins. / Unrated. The film begins with a rather frank confession of need.
BABY TOOTH
Like a pink flamingo resplendent on a sea of grass, Marina (Dakota Bouher) lounges in anticipation beside her cherry 1977 Starcraft Super Sport, tricked out with all the luxuries of a fine recreational watercraft. She anxiously, chillaxedly, tugs at a string tied to one of her teeth, her generously applied lipstick smearing the line with a ruby-red streak that scans half-flirt, half-blood. It's a big day for the once nautically inclined Marina: either the boat goes or the tooth goes — ideally, she will ditch both today. And here comes her latest prospective buyer/tugger now. So what's it gonna be: the boat… or the tooth?
The boat, as it happens. And Marina's company, if she's game, which cracks open a big ol' can of worms on her otherwise gorgeous day. Olivia Accardo's Baby Tooth is more gag than commentary, but the way Accardo flips the stranger's left-field invite by giving Marina the upper hand —tugging her string and saying she's in, but only if he yanks her tooth out — is a riot. Plus, we never do learn if that fang of hers is loose, infected, or if she just feels it's time for it to exit her face, only that she wants it out. Enough to let a slam-dunk sale walk, hollering belligerently and minus one boat. Her defiance is bracing.
Keith Roy Chrismon, who sadly passed after production, is hilarious as the short's good ol' boy who bites off more than he can chew. Bouher, as Marina, sells Accardo's silly summertime fling (not to mention that boat) with a wink and no small amount of wily charm. Together, their impasse shifts the axis of civility and transforms a casual goof into an oddball bit of absurdist commercial art. I don't know what cosmic accident allowed Baby Tooth to exist in this form with these people — I think Adult Swim might have to take some culpability here — but I'm glad it does. It had me howling.
7 / 10
Baby Tooth premiered as part of the "Pick N Mix" series at the Village East at Angelika on Tuesday, June 10. For more info, click this.
Written and directed by Olivia Accardo.
Starring Dakota Bouher, Keith Roy Chrismon, and Lisa Hawthorne.
6 mins. / Unrated. The stranger goes ballistic.