THE STORY – Julia, Tobias and their eleven-year-old daughter Marielle seem like the perfect family. But when Marielle inexplicably gains the ability to see and hear everything her parents do, that illusion shatters. As their private indiscretions and personal insecurities become known to their young child, Julia and Tobias’ lives become fully upended. Faced with an impossible future, the couple must try to find a way to reverse Marielle’s newfound gift one way or another.
THE CAST – Julia Jentsch, Felix Kramer & Laeni Geiseler
THE TEAM – Frédéric Hambalek (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 87 minutes
How much control should one enact over their young children? And what if the children were to turn the tables on their parents? That’s the question German filmmaker Frédéric Hambalek uses as the starting point for his sophomore feature film “What Marielle Knows,” a sci-fi comedy where the genre element is deliberately, efficiently minimalistic, conveyed primarily through the three central performances by Julia Jentsch, Felix Kramer, and Laeni Geiseler. The latter, aged 13 during filming, walks away with almost the entire movie, introducing herself as a new major promise of young European acting.
The story begins, however, not with her but with Jentsch as Julia, a bored career woman talking about things with a male colleague over a smoke break. The conversation quickly turns sexual, with the guy (heavily) implying he’s looking for an adulterous relationship. She returns the flirting with language that would certainly make the HR department blush, setting the tone for a film that will frequently, gleefully aim below the belt in more ways than one.
Kramer, as her husband Tobias, dominates the following scene in a business setting: he works for a publishing house and is running a meeting about the marketing strategies for an upcoming novel. A younger, snooty colleague objects to the chosen cover design, claiming it won’t appeal to readers (“It’s pseudo-Magritte,” he says), and other staffers chime in with similar sentiments. The man begrudgingly agrees to weigh other options despite the pressing deadline.
The two adults later recount their respective days to each other over dinner, with their young daughter Marielle present. They lie about what happened, prompting the girl to call them out. This is when she reveals that, following an incident earlier that same day, she has acquired telepathic abilities: she can see and hear everything her parents do and recite their statements from memory to prove she’s telling the truth. Naturally, her father suspects she’s managed to hack their phones and dismisses the whole thing as a teenage prank. Still, as the days go by, it becomes clear her powers are legit, which puts a strain on the girl’s relationship with both parents, particularly her mother, as a result of the adulterous flirting mentioned above.
Yes, it’s basically “X-Men” merged with a workplace comedy. However, the inspiration for Marielle appears to be rooted in a different genre tale. Geiseler, who shares a slight physical resemblance with “Carrie”-era Sissy Spacek, is occasionally framed in dream-like shots whose colors and mood are likely meant to evoke Brian De Palma’s masterful Stephen King adaptation. It’s the lone concession to more classic sci-fi/horror imagery in what is otherwise, save for a tonally disjointed moment in the publishing house plot strand, an understated, carefully constructed exercise in minimalistic worldbuilding.
Hambalek’s script smartly divulges only the essential details (even the legitimate question of whether Marielle’s powers allow her to “listen in” on other people aside from her parents goes completely unaddressed for the duration of the film), and yet it feels like a complete universe, one that would be dragged down by too much lore as it becomes clear the telepathy is merely an excuse to carry out a ruthless, yet simultaneously warm and sincere, examination of family bonds taken to the extreme. Every word is carefully measured, and every shot is exquisitely planned to capture the silent indignation of a girl fed up with being lied to and of her elders, who gradually realize their impeccable public façade is about to crumble.
That it works as well as it should is mainly due to the director’s decision to play it straight and to direct his actors accordingly, even in scenes that would naturally lend themselves to a more overtly farcical approach (at one point, in an attempt to test the extent of his daughter’s abilities, the father tries speaking French while in bed with his wife), the filmmaker is undoubtedly helped by the decision to cast actors who are primarily associated with dramatic roles (Jentsch gained international fame for playing anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl, while Kramer’s filmography includes the Netflix series “Dark”), and therefore approach their roles without feeling the need to go bigger than required, keeping the comedy grounded and sharp even as the premise’s implications get surreal but not literally so.
But even as the reality imagined by Hambalek becomes increasingly heightened (while keeping both feet on the ground in a way that feels smart rather than gimmicky), a certain emotional core is evident throughout the movie, with a sincerity that feeds the rapport between the actors and adds dramatic heft to the family dynamic. As it gets tested, the stakes are in plain sight, and the comedy succeeds because beneath each grotesquely tinged laugh lies a kernel of human pain and vulnerability, up to and including a perfectly judged final shot that strips the film further down, relying not on the precise, witty dialogue, but on the ideal wordless scenario.
