It all starts with a clamp that has washed. In super time motion, the twelve -year -old student Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) gets banged after calling her best friend as a “bitch”. But the Berlinale competition contribution “What Marielle knows“Is none of these films such as” God of the slaughter “or” Armand “, where parents and teaching staff talk about head and collar in the discussion of a (succinct).
Instead, the fantastic comedy of “Model Olimpia” director Frédéric Hambalek is more reminiscent of the idiosyncratic-bumped works by Sandra Wollner (“The Trouble with Beng Born”) or Yorgos Lanthimos. Because the baking pipe has unexpected consequences: Marielle can suddenly see and hear what her parents see and hear – even if they are not nearby, but at work or in sports.
For Marielle (Laeni Geiseler), their visual skills are even greater stress than for their observed parents.
For the first time at dinner, the parents get a taste of their daughter's involuntarily acquired skills. When they tell about their day, they are “corrected”: Tobias (Felix Kramer) works in a book publisher and proudly reports how he put a rebellious competitor (Moritz von Treuenfels) in his barriers. But Marielle knows better, because of course her dad pulled the tail again.
Mama Julia (Julia Jentsch) meanwhile gets a ruffle because she secretly smoked. Marielle, on the other hand, keeps the sexually very careful flirt with her colleague (Mehmet Atesci), even if she is very worried about the marriage of her parents …
Constantly under observation
With his only supposedly simple premise, “What Marielle knows” does a whole series of highly exciting topics: there are, for example, the different roles that every person takes in different situations – as a father, as a husband, as a professional or just very private for themselves But how should you work when your own daughter suddenly mutates into the ultimate surveillance device?
At the same time, the Frédéric Hambalek, who is also responsible for the script, reveals the whole phrase of the saying “I live for my children”: that says particularly easily, but when your child observes your own around the clock and potentially after every action evaluated to his own standards, of course this is a completely different number.
Tobias (Felix Kramer) and Julia (Julia Jentsch) can of course find anything but funny with the sudden and not to prevent 24/7 monitoring.
Tobias and Julia are neither (especially) bad parents nor people. But “what Marielle knows” is very clever, displacing our everyday, everyday level of lying. Marial visual skills are never visually illustrated, so we as an audience can only rely on their statements and explanations, but they sound very convincing.
Nevertheless, the parents of their daughter cannot help or assist for a long time, because they first have to admit to their spouse that Marielle says the truth. But admitting your own weaknesses is apparently much more difficult than putting the words of your own daughter as mere spinning.
It gets really strange during sex!
Despite his painful satirical bite, “what Marielle knows” also scores with a lot of (black) humor. As I said, you have to think of the films by Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Killing of A Sacred Deer”). Some scenes could also be imagined in a slapstick comedy with Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell. This includes the moment when Julia is first flirted with sexual uniqueness after the long-term surveillance knowledge in the office.
Because she knows that Marielle “listens”, she instantly tries to put everything into perspective for her daughter, which is not himself, as if there was still an invisible guest in the room. Later, the mother actually actually has sex – but only after she has found a position in which at least the “transferred” look to the daughter remains free of youth as possible. Even in the Arthouse cinema, even laughing can be laughed at.
Conclusion: You have to come to something like that! Frédéric Hambalek found the perfect premise for “What Marielle knows” to disclose our everyday lying in dealing with each other. Quite clever and often also sucky.
We saw “what Marielle knows” as part of the Berlinale 2025, where the film celebrated its world premiere as part of the official competition.