Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Frédéric Hambalek
Starring: Julia Jentsch, Felix Kramer, Laeni Geiseler, Mehmet Ateşçi, Sissy Höfferer, Moritz Treuenfels
Perhaps the creepiest thing about those evil alien kids from the '60s sci-fi classic Village of the Damned (and indeed its mediocre John Carpenter remake) is their telepathic ability. In those two movies it becomes a suspenseful plot device: how do you defeat a foe when they can read your mind and are thus always one step ahead of you? But for adults, the idea that kids could read our minds and be exposed to all our grown-up neuroses is disturbing to contemplate. How could we teach values to our kids if they could see inside our minds and realise that we're not practicing what we preach?
German writer/director Frédéric Hambalek mines this idea for dark laughs with his sophomore feature What Marielle Knows. The film revolves around a parent's nightmare scenario of their child being able to read their minds and even see through their eyes as they go about their day.
After receiving a playground slap from a classmate, 12-year-old Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) discovers she has suddenly developed telepathic powers. Despite being able to recount details of their work days that she couldn't possibly be privy to, Marielle's parents - Julia (Julia Jentsch) and Tobias (Felix Kramer) - are initially sceptical, believing their daughter has somehow hacked their phones. But as Marielle displays knowledge of increasingly intimate details of her parents' lives, they're forced to accept that she can indeed see their every action.
This leads Julia and Tobias to drastically alter their lives. Constantly emasculated in his job by his colleagues, Tobias becomes concerned by the idea of his daughter seeing what a pushover her father really is, and so he begins standing up for himself. Having recently embarked on a sexual affair with co-worker Max (Mehmet Ateşçi), Julia attempts to end the affair without explicitly admitting that it had ever occurred, ever wary that her child is listening and watching, but she eventually acquiesces to Max's desires.
Julia's affair generates What Marielle Knows' most amusing scenes. When Julia and Max hook up in a break room, the former tries to arrange their bodies in a way that won't expose Marielle to any sights that will scar her for life. Knowing Marielle is listening, Julia makes declarations for her daughter's benefit like "sex is a perfectly natural thing between two adults," much to the bemusement of Max.
Hambalek's primary influence would appear to be the edgy, black-as-night '90s social satires of the likes of Todd Solondz and Neil LaBute, right down to borrowing the string quartet scene punctuation of LaBute's Your Friends and Neighbors. But What Marielle Knows is never quite as caustic and skin-crawling as the '90s work of those controversial filmmakers. Many of the situations Hambalek contrives are funnier in theory than in practice, and you feel there's a lot of comedy left in the jar. It's unclear if Marielle's telepathic powers extend beyond her parents, and we're left to wonder how her teachers might cope with the realisation that one of their pupils an read their thoughts.
There are clever touches, like Tobias and Julia speaking in French so Marielle can't understand their words, and such scenes play like a comic reworking of the astronauts trying to outwit HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jentsch and Kramer are suitably flustered in their performances, and the young Geiseler is impressive, especially when you consider that her age means she won't have been exposed to most of the very adult script. The final scene is surprisingly touching. But we come away from What Marielle Knows feeling that the movie has only scratched the surface of the cringe comedy it might have mined from this unique scenario.
