What Marielle Knows Review: Razor-Sharp Comedy

What Marielle Knows (Was Marielle Weiß) is a sharp, pointed comedy that deconstructs the “perfect” family dynamic in endlessly creative ways.

What Marielle Knows revolves around a young girl (Laeni Geiseler) who suddenly develops telepathic powers, allowing her to watch every move her parents make while they’re away from home. What she discovers is a marriage founded on lies and deception. Her mother Julia (Julia Jentsch) is entangled in an affair with a coworker, while her father Tobias (Felix Kramer) shrouds his professional mediocrity behind a façade of success and bravery. When they realize their daughter sees through their dishonesty, they strive to present a more virtuous front that is neither sincere nor particularly effective.

From the film’s audacious opening – a jarringly crude exchange between Julia and her workplace lover – it’s immediately clear that Frédéric Hambalek is a very brave and confident writer. Very few filmmakers would dare open their screenplays with such an uncomfortable scene, but this unflinching honesty and refusal to water down the film’s themes is what makes What Marielle Knows so engaging. It meets the audience on a familiar level, neither softening its truths nor sanitizing its humor; instead, it embraces the chaos of family life with a knowing wink, making its sharpest observations feel eerily familiar. Hambalek understands how universally challenging the concepts of family and parenthood can be, and his brilliant screenplay pokes fun at these ideas to make them more digestible.

A film so reliant on observing the truths of everyday life or dies or dies with its performances, and What Marielle Knows thrives due to its outstanding cast. Each member of the talented ensemble adopts a very naturalistic style that blends perfectly with Hambalek’s dry and witty screenplay; they create a domestic environment that feels overwhelmingly authentic despite the supernatural themes. Julia Jensch and Felix Kramer, as the duplicitous yet painfully human parents, are the heart and soul of this film – its their characters through which Hambalek explores his themes of guilt, performance, and self-loathing with such pinpoint accuracy.

What Marielle Knows’ script is just as fast-paced as it is tightly written, lacing its frequent humor with a much more poignant insight into how our lives are plagued by performance and dishonesty at every turn. The film’s dry wit and tangible comedic energy contain some deceptively clear-cut assertions about how much of our lives are motivated purely by selfish intentions – and importantly, how this changes when we know our behavior is being monitored. It’s a very funny and intelligent deconstruction of how fragile the walls of marriage and parenthood can be, asserting that maybe it’s not as ideal as it seems to know everything about your loved ones. What Marielle Knows exposes this insincerity with surgical precision, suggesting that the greatest dishonesty within a family isn’t the secrets we keep, but the roles we insist on playing.

What Marielle Knows moves with a restless energy and rhythm, mirroring the growing absurdity of the family’s situation. Editor Anne Fabini knows exactly when to cut a scene for maximum comedic impact, never lingering too long on a joke but always giving it room to breathe. The only glaring problem with the film’s rocketing momentum is that its final act doesn’t feel as tight and precise as the others, stumbling over its own technicalities as it rushes to a conclusion. This leaves the ending feeling much less confident than everything that precedes it, which is a shame, but it’s a problem that can’t be ignored. Perhaps it’s a consequence of such ambitious storytelling throughout the rest of the film, which goes to such forceful lengths that it fails to restrain itself in the end.

With its biting humor, gripping pacing, and inflammatory social commentary, What Marielle Knows is an excellent comedy and a rare gem – both wildly entertaining and thematically deceptive. Hambalek refuses to offer easy solutions to the questions it asks, leaving the audience instead with a film whose jokes stand out while watching but whose strong commentary on family and communication lingers much longer. This is a film that doesn’t just observe family dysfunction but revels in it, daring us to laugh even as we recognize ourselves in its reflections.

What Marielle Knows (Was Marielle Weiß) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 17, 2025. Read our Berlin Film Festival reviews and our list of 20 films to watch at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival!