When George Miller’s jury took to the stage at the awards ceremony of this years Cannes Film Festival, Toni Erdmann was the name on everyone’s lips. Amongst the heady scrum of Cannes royalty, – Jarmusch, Arnold, the Dardennes Brothers, sat the anomaly of Toni Erdmann, a 162 minute German comedy that had gained the highest Screen International jury score in recent memory (3.7/4), and better still it was directed by a women who had yet to make a significant mark on the international stage. Could this be the year that Cannes dispelled the growing notion it was little more than a self-congratulatory sausage fest, consolidating the status quo with it’s ever growing army of brow-beating male auteurs (only one woman has ever won the Palme D’or, Jane Campion for The Piano). Alas, no. Despite the unanimous praise and feverish certainty of Ade’s success, Miller’s jury confounded all expectations by awarding the Palme D’or to Ken Loach’s prosaic state-of-the-nation I, Daniel Blake, making Loach the newest member of the ‘Double Palme d’Or,’ having won previously for The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Emergency aborted. Please proceed as normal.

But what of Toni Erdmann? Was its support akin to a Corbynesque rallying behind the underdog, a comedic, knockabout tonic amongst the weighty soul searching of the in competition lineup? Or was it truly deserving of its praise and also the coverted Palme d’Or. In a word, yes. For all the politicised arguments about Ade’s gender and that Cannes hasn’t dared award the Palme d’Or to a comedy in decades and that it should get off its damn high horse. The most compelling argument it that it’s a truly great film, a knockabout surrealist farce that manages not only to dissect the knotty sinew of parent/child relationships, but also offers a masterful takedown of globalization, corporate culture and women’s place within it. The much repeated strap line of it being a nearly three hour long German comedy about an elderly serial prankster attempting to light a fire under his starchy uptight daughter with fright wigs, false teeth and a whoopee cushion, only does the film a massive disservice.

Winifed (Peter Simonischek) is a divorced 70 year old bear of a man, a music teacher whose latest pupil has just deserted him and whose dog is on the verge of meeting its maker. He spends his time filling the boredom by playing practical jokes. One victim is a bewildered deliveryman, who falls foul of Winifred’s claim that his parcel was ordered by his brother, a former jailbird whose modus operandi was sending anonymous letter bombs. He mingles with a collection of middle class couples in turtlenecks, who drink red wine and tolerate his mischief with eye rolling good humour. Winifred has a daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller), a corporate climber working for a consultancy company in Bucharest who’s currently advising on her oil company client’s mass redundancies. During one of her flying visits to Germany, Winifred decides that Ines’ buttoned down corporate life could use a some of his patented humour and so when his dog finally dies, makes a snap decision to fly to Romania for a surprise visit, bringing his shambolic alter ego in tow, Toni Erdmann “German ambassador and life coach.”

On the surface this seems like few peoples idea of a good time at the cinema, especially when you take into account that most of Winifred/Toni’s mischief evoke the kind of cheap larks commonly found in a Carry On film. What Toni Erdmann proves though is that context is the key. A man in an ill-fitting port coloured wig and false teeth attempting to grate Paramsan into someone’s hair isn’t funny, however take the same situation and place it in an obscenely tacky Romanian club with crassly loud techno and half-naked middle-aged men and suddenly the gag takes on a surreal quality that wouldn’t seen out of place in a latter-day Bunuel film. See also – a somewhat depressing sexual encounter involving ejaculate on a French Fancy. Ade also shares Bunuel’s flair with social satire. Toni himself operates as a textbook philistine or akin to one of Herzog’s holy fools, whose ignorance and lack of social graces tease out the more heinous, macho and misogynistic elements of the corporate world. Tellingly, Ines is taken far more seriously by her male colleagues when Toni is by her side, suggesting that not only are they more comfortable when she is supported by a man, but also that they see very little difference in both his behavior and theirs. A fairly regular gag is that people are more likely to offer him a business card than her.

Overall though what the film offers in spades is genuine heart and compassion. Ines, who could so easily have fallen into the trope of the buttoned down drone who’s emotionally unfulfilled by her pact with the corporate devil, has a far greater complexity. Hüller’s performance is beautifully calibrated and right from the off you can see in tiny ways how she’s very much her father’s daughter. The turning point for Ines is a hilariously delirious, one-take karaoke performance of Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love of All, where her well maintained armor finally crumbles. Within that one shot are all the complex facets of her character bubbling to the surface; fear, exhaustion, perseverance and determination. Simonischek is equally superb as both Winifred and Toni, exhibiting immense pathos with a simple slump of the shoulders. Despite all his pratfalls and freewheeling stunts, his eyes emit a deep-rooted sadness, an awareness that his innocence and playfulness is at odds with the world around him; someone to be tolerated rather than admired.

Ade has created a beautifully observed epic about two lonely individuals and the layers of disguise and deception they cloak themselves with in order to make better sense of the world. The film through its loose digressive structure highlights the very fallacy of their own personal deceptions; that life is messy and sprawling, it offers no easy solutions and is instead a series of disappointments and reluctant compromises. It’s a bittersweet end to an at times riotously funny film, but the melancholic tone feels well earned and fitting with its overall themes of loneliness and alienation.