My Wonderful Wanda
About the Film “In her biting dramatic comedy of errors, award-winning Swiss director Bettina Oberli astutely tackles class issues and shows how money doesn’t buy happiness and is never simple when dealing with family and reputations. Anchored by Teen Spirit’s Grochowska, Downfall’s Minichmayr, and Marathon Man’s Keller, My Wonderful Wanda keeps the twists and turns coming, especially when Wanda’s father Pawel Kowalski (Cezary Pazura) steps into the chaos.” Judd Taylor, Tribeca Film Festival Winner of awards at Tribeca and Vancouver, MY WONDERFUL WANDA is a delightful satire of the haves and the have-nots set against the backdrop of a gorgeous lakeside villa in Switzerland. At the story’s center is Wanda (Agnieszka Grochowska), a Polish caretaker who has left her own small children in Poland to look after Josef (André Jung) the stroke-ridden patriarch of the wealthy Wegme
Uneven comedy-drama ‘My Wonderful Wanda’ has a dash of ‘Parasite’ and a smidgen of ‘Juno’
By Ann HornadayThe Washington Post
Aliocha Merker/Zodiac Pictures/Zeitgeist Films
We meet Wanda on a bus from Poland to Germany, where she is returning to work for a prosperous family in their gracious lakeside villa. The patriarch has suffered a stroke and is bedridden; he’s sent all the other help away. He wants Wanda back. There’s also work to do preparing for his upcoming 70th birthday celebration, which his wife is determined to throw even amid suboptimal conditions.
MOVIE REVIEW
RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes
‘My Wonderful Wanda’ Review: A Polish Home-Care Worker Sparks Change With Her Swiss Employers Variety 1 hr ago
Money can buy outside help, opportunity and material possessions, but not happiness in “My Wonderful Wanda,” a punchy satire from Swiss auteur Bettina Oberli (“Late Bloomers”). Taking a wry but empathetic approach to the phenomenon of care migration, Oberli and her co-writer Cooky Ziesche focus on the changing relationship between one privileged Swiss family and their financially fragile Polish home-care worker over nine months. Naturalistically shot and structured as three chapters and an epilogue, it’s an engaging, mostly well-acted tale, full of surprising twists, even if some seem a bit too on the nose. Opening in theaters and virtual cinemas on April 23, this Zeitgeist Films release should segue from international film festival favorite to modest art-house hit.
Engagingly played, but runs out of satirical steam.
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Marthe Keller plays a wealthy matriarch whose family is dealt shocking news in an ensemble comic drama from Swiss filmmaker Bettina Oberli.
My Wonderful Wanda takes its title (zingier in the original German:
Wanda, Mein Wunder) from a line of dialogue, an affectionate and somewhat deluded exclamation by a 70-year-old bedridden Swiss man to his 30-something Polish caretaker. The two have a secret, a side deal, that will disrupt the already shaky serenity of the man s family and draw hers into a clash of cultures and classes. Bettina Oberli is more interested in the interplay of her characters than a barbed look at geopolitics, an approach that clicks only to a point in this well-performed but overlong and uneven feature.
‘My Wonderful Wanda’: Film Review Sheri Linden
My Wonderful Wanda takes its title (zingier in the original German:
Wanda, Mein Wunder) from a line of dialogue, an affectionate and somewhat deluded exclamation by a 70-year-old bedridden Swiss man to his 30-something Polish caretaker. The two have a secret, a side deal, that will disrupt the already shaky serenity of the man’s family and draw hers into a clash of cultures and classes. Bettina Oberli is more interested in the interplay of her characters than a barbed look at geopolitics, an approach that clicks only to a point in this well-performed but overlong and uneven feature.