Films about adults through the perspective of children are often about how the young ones only see a small part of a larger puzzle. Usually the passage of time and various subtleties in filmmaking technique mean that the child cannot fill out the full picture. This type of genre quickly gets tiresome, especially at film festivals, where you can’t walk five metres without encountering yet another coming-of-age story.
The wildly funny What Marielle Knows (Frédéric Hambalek, 2025) bucks this trend. The eponymous Marielle not only has a better understanding than most children her age, but a terrifying full understanding instead, magically able to see and watch everything her parents do. From here Hambalek, following up his promising and disturbing debut Model Olimpia (2020), creates a fascinating exploration of the secrets families keep from each other to keep functioning normally, before committing to the bit in deliciously entertaining ways.
Dogs of Berlin-star (Christian Alvart, 2020) Felix Kramer plays Tobias, a self-important publisher of French-to-German translations. He stars opposite Julia Jentsch as Julia, a tightly-wound mother looking for some more excitement in life. Before we discover that Marielle has magic powers similar to Mel Gibson in the it-still-holds-up-despite-being-kinda-outdated What Women Want (Nancy Meyers, 2000), Hambalek gives them both their own scene.
In the first, Julia flirts outrageously with her colleague while having a cigarette, no sordid detail left unturned; in the second, Tobias is bested in a meeting by the upstart Sören (Moritz Treuenfels). At dinner time Marielle tells in minute detail how Tobias was shown-up at work, leading to a strenous denial. Then she grasses on her mother, revealing that she was smoking. But crucially, the sexual fantasies are left unrevealed, Hambalek trusting the audience to fill in the gaps. Does Marielle want leverage over her mother? Or is the young girl too afraid to talk about the worst thing of all: the idea of your mother having sex?
Either way, Hambelek is smart not to go down the obvious route, nor to focus too much on Marielle himself, keenly observing how adults would act when they know that their children are able to see and hear everything that they say. Behaviour is modulated in increasingly hilarious ways, the film piiling a variety of awkward incidents on top of each other in a deeply satisfying fashion. And, for those who managed to see the excellently twisted Model Olimpia, Hambelek shows off his once again his obsessive fascination with twisted and crazy sexuality — pushing mother-child relationships to their most fucked-up breaking point.
This is a far more accessible — and accomplished! — work than his debut. Watch out for the inevitable, sanded-down Hollywood remake. I can already see Kristen Wiig and Will Ferell reading the script.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.