As he did in his directorial debut, the excellent Bones and Names (2023), Fabian Stumm mines the details of his own life and adapts them, to varying degrees, in his sophomore feature, Sad Jokes. Stumm plays Joseph, a filmmaker in the development trenches for his next film, who copes with the challenges of co-parenting his son, Pino (portrayed by his real-life son, Justus Meyer), with his best friend Sonya (Haley Louise Jones) who has returned prematurely from a stint at a mental health clinic. Across two films now, Stumm has assembled something of a stock company who inject his cool, antiseptic vision of contemporary Berlin with genuine warmth. This convergence of opposites conveniently mirrors Joseph’s creative ambition in Sad Jokes, to make a sad and funny movie, and in turn makes a sad and funny movie out of Sad Jokes itself.
It’s no surprise, then, that Sad Jokes swings for the tonal fences. Stumm is interested in the ways human beings try, and sometimes fail, to preserve their dignity in the face of humiliation, struggle, and social impropriety. Often, Joseph is the poor guinea pig on whom Stumm tests the limits of grace and poise. After an early confrontation with Sonya about her departure from the clinic, Joseph meets with his producer. Their mannered conversation revolves around Joseph’s upcoming project, until a bizarre moment when the producer takes a dog treat out of his pocket, puts it in his mouth, chews it up, and gives it to his dog. The turn plays out with utter nonchalance, while Joseph, perhaps dependent on remaining in the man’s good graces, pretends everything is fine, and that yes, indeed, there must be something wrong with the dog’s teeth that prevents him from chewing his own treats.
Other bizarre indignities and social faux pas pad out Sad Joke’s loosely formed narrative. The stars of Joseph’s last film have a very public fight after the premiere, and Joseph ruins a date with Dominic, the handsome nude model from his art class, after romantic expectations collide with parental responsibilities. Earlier, when Joseph gets his fingers stuck in a vending machine, his only help is an awkward woman who fusses over what snack to buy so they can open the receptacle door, and ponders uselessly over whether the police, ambulance, or fire department will be most helpful to them. Each scenario, ripe for and attuned to comedy’s absurd and pathetic potential, tests the limits of Joseph’s ability to pretend everything is fine.
Of course, Joseph can’t pretend that everything is fine. Luckily, his art teacher, Elin (Ulrica Flach), whom he asks to sculpt a large likeness of his face for his new film (about a man who’s afraid of large, human-like statues), provides both Joseph’s life and Sad Jokes with a grounding presence. Stumm’s ability to add weight to an otherwise breezy film — Rohmer is clearly an inspiration, and early in the film is evoked explicitly — finds its most potent outlet in the scenes between Joseph and Elin. Flach is phenomenal in her first film role, exemplified by the ease with which she embodies casual, warm authority while teaching her portrait class; as well as her devastating recitation of a Joan of Arc speech, given from memory as proof of her former ambitions to be an actor. Stumm expresses an affinity for his actresses throughout Sad Jokes, but nowhere as powerfully as when he directs his camera toward Elin’s face mid-monologue; for a moment the spirit of Maria Falconetti threatens to take over.
Stumm’s aesthetic sensibilities may lean toward the cool and distant; there is sometimes a limit to how much fluorescently lit, statically framed compositions can affect us emotionally. Thankfully, his actors counterbalance these tendencies, and come to represent that intangible thing in the film we might call soul. They embrace the thematic interests of the film with ease by portraying fallible human beings with interests and quirks and insecurities and emotional blind spots. It’s our privilege that Stumm recognizes this, and guides their vital role in his films with deft, sophisticated hands.
Published as part of TIFF 2024 — Dispatch 4.
