Mark Reviews Movies: MY WONDERFUL WANDA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 22, 2021

To call the wealthy family at the center of My Wonderful Wanda dysfunctional seems like an understatement. They're a collective mess of resentment and angst and unchecked privilege. Every one of them likely has never been told "No," so each of them lives and behaves as if the entire world and everyone within it are there to fulfill their wants, needs, and whims.

That's the setup of the main joke of the screenplay by director Bettina Oberli and Cooky Ziesche. The continuous punch line is how the story gives this family one new problem that they can't control after another. All of those unexpected troubles come from one woman—one whom they assumed was lesser than them, at their beck and call, and completely harmless. In the family's mind, she could be their downfall, but in reality, it's their treatment of her that starts all of this in the first place and ensures that the problems continue to mount.

The woman is Wanda (Agnieszka Grochowska), who comes from Poland and lives with this family at their lakeside estate somewhere in Switzerland. Her job is to serve as the caretaker for patriarch Josef (André Jung), who was the successful CEO of a company, until a stroke rendered him partially paralyzed. The two have a secondary arrangement, in which Josef pays Wanda for sex. Wanda has two young sons at home, living with her own parents while she works. The pay for her regular work isn't enough to give the kids the life she wants for them.

Josef's wife Elsa (Marthe Keller) tends to matters of the house, assuming that Wanda will take on more responsibilities with a meager pay increase. The caretaker's negotiation tactics show that she's smarter and more confident than anyone in the family assumes.

The couple's adult son is Gregi (Jacob Matschenz) still lives at home, being more interested in birds than in taking over his father's role at the company. He also has a pretty significant crush on Wanda.

Their daughter Sophie (Birgit Minichmayr) is controlling and in a loveless marriage to attorney Manfred (Anatole Taubman). When Sophie arrives to celebrate Josef's 70th birthday, all of the unspoken tensions within the family become patently obvious. Wanda becomes a kind of scapegoat for the hostilities.

Oberli and Ziesche establish the family dynamic with sharp observations and some biting humor. We see the assumptions and prejudices of these people in their treatment of Wanda. There's the way Elsa simply presumes the caretaker should do household chores without much compensation. Even a seeming act of kindness, when Elsa gifts Wanda with one of her many and now unused dresses, is undermined when the rich woman tells the caretaker that she shouldn't wear it for Josef's birthday party. She doesn't want the guests to have the wrong idea—that Wanda is anything more than the hired help.

Does it even need to be said that the two men—one who uses Wanda for sex and the other whose apparent sweetness toward her becomes a bit more possessive when things become really complicated—treat Wanda more as an object than a person? There's a particularly funny payoff to a cover story invented on the spot by Wanda and Josef, when Gregi buys Wanda what he thinks she wants, only proving how little he actually knows about her. Sophie denigrates the caretaker with such consistency and frequency that the insults and accusations—specifically that she has been stealing from the family—say more about her than Wanda.

They're a pretty petty and miserable bunch, which would be kind of horrifying if not for the filmmakers' clear contempt for them and the presence of Wanda, who can see through all of their foibles and isn't afraid to stand up to them in little and, later, much bigger ways. The central premise here, in terms of the story and the comedy, is that this family needs Wanda, more than they can comprehend—although Wanda definitely realizes that fact. The big question is whether or not they'll actually understand that reality. If not, can Wanda find a way to escape them, without suffering too much from the specific complication they've created for her.

After the fallout from the birthday festivities, Wanda returns to the house, having left following Sophie's accusation that she had been stealing money. She has a bit of a surprise. She's pregnant. Elsa pieces that together, but she has no idea that Josef is the soon-to-be father. Much more scheming, disparagement, and treating Wanda either as a non-entity or someone who needs to be controlled commences from that eventual revelation.

While all of this possesses the kind of frantic back-and-forth of a farce (plenty of misunderstandings and a lot of big reactions), Oberli keeps much of this story grounded by way of its attention to these characters, its cutting depiction of class dichotomy and upper-class selfishness and self-inflation, and a recognition of just how miserable all of these people are, simply because they have no real sense of self-worth or the worth of other people. The film is funny and, in a low-key way, infuriating. There's also, though, a surprising air of longing and melancholy to this family, who wants for nothing—save for an understanding of what it means to be happy with themselves and others.

The filmmakers might be asking us to sympathize a bit too much with this family, especially after giving us so many reasons to see their faults. On a superficial level, though, My Wonderful Wanda does make us feel more generous toward this family than they do for anyone else, thanks to Oberli's smart control of the film's tone.

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