What Marielle Knows

What does Marielle (Laeni Geiseler) know in Frédéric Hambalek’s somewhat supernatural family drama? After being slapped by a schoolfriend she insulted, the young girl can see and hear everything her parents do all day; whom her mother, Julia (Julia Jentsch), flirts with at work and how her father, Tobias (Felix Kramer), actually behaved during a staff meeting at his publishing job, as opposed to the rearranged facts he dishes out during the family dinner that night about his nemesis, Sören (Moritz von Treuenfels).

What Marielle Knows (Was Marielle weiß), produced by Tobias Walker and Philipp Worm (of Frauke Finsterwalder’s Finsterworld, and her exquisitely bold Sisi & I, plus the currently filming Eurotrash, based on Christian Kracht’s novel, starring Barbara Sukowa and Alexander Fehling), premièred at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year and is a highlight in the Viewpoints programme of the 24th edition of the Tribeca Festival.

The intriguing concept plays out from initial parental disbelief and denial to unexpected changes in behaviour and attitudes. In the 1897 novel What Maisie Knew, author Henry James explored the sole complex perspective of a child following her parents’ harrowing divorce (turned in 2012 into a film of the same name by Scott McGehee and David Siegel). Hambalek broadens the angle to an omniscient gaze and ear, which mirrors that of movie spectators, who most of the time know much more than any single character on screen.

Parents taking away a child’s perceptions is as commonplace as it feels pressing in each individual case. The discovery that a father’s weakness and a mother’s longings have an impact on their offspring flares up in their world that is perfectly sterile and bland. These are informed people whose goal is to fit in with everyone else in their medium-sized town and their surely self-described medium rich life.

When Dad champions an image of a headless bird for a book cover design, which his colleagues label “pseudo Magritte,” it perfectly symbolises how his choices are made. Middle-of the road, inoffensive, with just the right accessories and oatmeal-colored sweaters to not stand out. A sleek water bottle when on the move for show, a teabag dangling out of his single cup at home when seemingly nobody is watching.

What happens when the daughter becomes the re-bodied conscience, a Jiminy Cricket with the limited life experience of a school girl? Good thing there is grandma (Sissy Höfferer) who is pragmatic and the least fazed by this new reality, whereas Marielle’s mother ventures into dangerous, devil-may-care territory in cluing her daughter in about the birds and bees and what she is up to with colleague Max (Mehmet Atesci) during their not so secretive cigarette breaks.

“Your dad isn’t perfect either, you can stop being angry at me,” says Julia, which sums up perfectly the parents’ dilemma. Ultimately it is all about them and Marielle knows this now. If you stare long enough at your selfishness, the devil might eventually laugh back.

Reviewed on: 11 Jun 2025