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It’s a Wanda-ful Life

"My Wonderful Wanda," award-winning Swiss director Bettina Oberli's entry to the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, is an exceedingly quirky dramedy. It has some excellent moments, and others where you wonder why the story has to take seemingly inexplicable turns that feel strained. It's still absolutely worth it, though.

Wanda (Agnieszka Grochowska) is a personal nurse from Poland who is working for a well-to-do-family that lives along a picturesque lake in Germany. Her job is to care for Josef (André Jung), the patriarch who is recovering from a stroke that has confined him for the most part to his bed.

Josef's 70^th birthday is soon and the family will be hosting a dinner party. Elsa (Marthe Keller) asks Wanda if she can also do some cleaning in addition to her nursing of Josef. Wanda agrees and her salary is adjusted. 

It turns out that Wanda has another source of income from Josef that no one else knows about. Whatever Wanda earns gets sent back to Poland where her father is taking care of her two young boys.

Josef and Elsa have two grown children. Gregi (Jacob Matschenz) is the underachieving son who still lives at home. Sofie (Birgit Minichmayr) has returned to the house with her husband for the party. She's a bit annoying, but not so much that she makes you hate her. She and her husband are having relationship problems.

A few family secrets come out that rattle everyone for different reasons. Some of what happens as a result is both funny and edgy. This would have been enough to make a fine film, but the story starts taking odd turns, which is okay, but to keep changing the character's reactions to everything they encounter makes it seem somewhat forced.

Despite this complaint, "My Wonderful Wanda" still an awful lot of fun. Somehow, at the end the final resolutions for all of the characters still feel believable even if how they got there isn't. "Wanda" is wonderful enough, despite my complaints.