‘What Marielle Knows’ review: Stylish, sly German comedy starring Julia Jentsch

Dir/scr: Frederic Hambalek. Germany. 2025. 87mins.

Ever since a friend slapped her face in the playground, 13-year-old Marielle has gained the ability to see and hear everything her parents do and say, all day and all night. The rise of parental surveillance is turned on its head in this stylish, thought-provoking German comedy which runs engagingly with its high-concept premise without once lowering the bar.

Good-looking audience pleaser 

One of the things that makes What Marielle Knows more than a teenager-parent spin on a play-it-for-laughs mindreading comedy like Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want, is the way its story is deepened and given resonance by the setting. This is an anodyne urban world of boxy houses, offices and schools, open-plan yet also alienating, in a German city (but it could be anywhere in Europe) where supposedly happy, well-off, cultured people seem to be just going through the motions. That should help this good-looking audience pleaser appeal to distributors and audiences alike.

Hambalek’s script is a skilled tumbler, able to flip from drama to hilarity and back again in seconds. It helps that seasoned German actors Julia Jentsch and Felix Kramer find a believable way into their roles as Marielle’s parents Julia and Tobias, making this feel like a real marriage in crisis without sacrificing any of the comic timing. The audience is primed by a tour-de-force opening scene in which Julia and lascivious work-colleague Max (Mehmet Atesci) dirty-talk, without actually carrying through on their words, during a cigarette break. The scene is funny enough in its own right, but it gets a second wind soon after when Julia realises that her daughter saw and heard everything.

When deeply shy only child Marielle reluctantly reveals her new-found ability to her parents in the cool, soulless modernist home the three share, disbelief is, of course, the first reaction. Then comes deceit. Julia is adamant she doesn’t smoke. Insecure Tobias is equally sure that he did not let a cocky junior colleague lead a mutiny against him during a work meeting at his publishing company. Both are lying, because we and Marielle saw and heard what happened – but don’t all parents have idealised images they want to project to their kids? 

After the lies comes mutual devastation then deviousness, such as when Tobias promises to let Marielle have her tablet back if she tells him what mum said earlier that day. Finally, the self-censorship and the conscious performances arrive, along with some truly funny moments like a hilarious mother-daughter sex education lesson.

What grounds the story is Marielle herself. While she doesn’t have the most screen time, she is the film’s emotional compass – and she is never played for laughs. Laeni Geiseler puts in an believable performance as a confused, taciturn adolescent who is having a difficult enough time of things as it is, without this unwanted mind-reading gift.

What Marielle Knows is an eloquent metaphor for the surveillance culture we have signed off on, but it’s also a neat reverse coming of age story – one that forces two adults to finally grow up. Jagged, high-volume snatches of Beethoven and Schubert string quartets act as chapter dividers and underline the steely, serious backbone of a comedy that is bathed in pale wintry light.